iiiwiiBiiiwiiiiiiiiriiiiT¥iiiwaMiai>iii ^iterary and Social Judgments W.R.GREG : i ju i imw wmmmmmm/mmmmmmmmmm vmummmKmm: ■ IRaxnnn lUtrxixs ©ahn^y S>an\a iBarbara formal ^ct?ool ...X9X3... .-4^-t^^^-^ /^/'>^ LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. ^2 tl)e jsamc ^tttl)or. ENIGMAS OF LIFE. I vol. i2mo. pp. 322. Price, $2.00. •,* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on ceipt 0/ price by the Publishers, JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston. LITERARY SOCIAL JUDGMENTS By W. R. GREG. BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, Late Ticknob & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 1873. University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Ca, Cambridge. b '^ ■ r Vi UNTVERsnr of California ^ «ANTA BARBARA COLLEGE LIBRARY CONTENTS. — « — Page ALA.DAME DE StAEL "... 7 British and Foreign Characteristics .... 54 False Morality of Lady Novelists .... 85 KiNGSLEY AND CaRLYLE 115 French Fiction: The Lowest Deep 146 Chateaubriand 182 m. de tocqueville 241 Why are Women redundant] 274 Truth versus Edification 309 Time 328 Good People 338 NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. One paper, an essay on the British freedmen in Jamaica, entitled " The Doom of the Negro Eace," is omitted from this edition, as not being of interest to the American reader, either in subject or treatment. LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. MADAME DE STAEL. " rpHE Life and Times of Madame de Stael": * what I a promise of vivid interest does not the title hold forth ! What a host of images and ideas start into life at the spell of that name, and silently group themselves around the central figure ! Necker, tlie object of her life-long worship, with his grand position, his bourgeois intellect, and his rare integrity ; Madame Necker, the rigid mother, the tender wife, the faithful friend, — pu- ritanical, precise, hornec, but not ungenial; Gibbon, at first the phlegmatic lover, afterwards the philosophic friend, but always brilliant, fascinating, and profound; Louis de Narbonne, perhaps the most perfect specimen then extant of the finished noble of the ancien regiiiu, polished to the core, not varnished merely on the sur- face; Talleyrand, the subtlest and deepest intellect of his time, and long the intimate associate of Madame de Stael ; Napoleon, her . relentless persecutor ; Benjamin Constant and Schlegel, her steady and attached allies : — these men form the circle of which she was the centre and the chief. Then the " times " in which she lived ! She saw the commencement and the close of tliat great social earth- quake which overthrew the oldest dynasty in Europe, shook society to its foundation, unsettled the minds of men to their inmost depths, turned up the subsoil of * The Life and Times of Madame de Stael. By Maria Norris. Lou- don. 1853. 8 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. nations witli a deeper ploughshare than Destiny had e\'er yet driven, and opened the way for those new so- cial ideas and those new political arrangements which are still operating and fermenting, and the final issue, the "perfect work," of which our children's cliildren may not live to see. Her life, though only prolonged through half a century, was coeval with that series of great events which, for magnitude and meaning, have no par- allel in human history ; by all of which she was more or less affected ; in some of which she took a prominent and not unintluential part. She was born while the house of Bourbon was at the height of its meretricious splendor and its reckless profligacy : she lived to see it return, after its tragic downfall and its dreary banish- ment, to a house that had been " swept and garnished," — little better and no wiser than before. She saw the rise, the culmination, and the setting of Kapoleon's meteor-star; she had reached the pinnacle of her fame while he was laying the foundation of his ; and she, shattered and way-worn, was beginning to look forward to her final rest when his career was closed forever in defeat and exile. But it is not of the period in which she lived that we think first or most naturally when we hear the name of Madame de Stael : it is of the writer wdiose wondrous gen- ius and glowing eloquence held captive our souls in "the season of susceptive youth," of the author of the Ldtrcs sur Rousseau, who sanctioned and justified our early par- tiality for that fascinating rhapsbdist, — oi L'AUcmagne, from whose pages we first imbibed a longing to make the riches of that mighty literature our own, — of Corinnc, over whose woes and sorrows so many eyes have wept delicious tears ; of that dazzling admixture of deep thought, tender sentiment, and brilliant fancy, which give to her writings a charm possessed by the produc- tions of no other woman, — and in truth of but few men. Anne-Marie Louise Necker was born at Paris in 1766. Both her parents were remarkable persons. Her father, MADAME DE STAEL. James Necker, a simple citizen of Geneva, began life as clerk in a banker's office in Paris, speedily became a partner, and by skill, diligence, sound judgment, and strict integrity, contrived in the course of twenty years to amass a large fortune and to acquire a lofty reputa- tion. While accumulating wealth, however, he neglected neither literature nor society. He studied both pliiloso- pliy and political economy ; he associated with the Ency- clopedists and eminent literati of the time ; his house was frequented by some of the most remarkable men who at that period made the Parisian salons the most brilliant in Europe ; and he found time, by various writ- ings on financial matters, to create a high and general estimation of his talents as an administrator and econo- mist. His management of the affairs of the French East India Company raised liis fame in the highest po- litical circles, while, as accredited agent for the Eepublic of Geneva at the Court of Versailles, he obtained the esteem and confidence alike of the sovereign and the ministers. So high did lie stand both in popular and courtly estimation, that, shortly after the accession of Louis XYL, he was appointed, although a foreigner, Comptroller-General of the Finances. He held this post for five years, till 1781 ; and contrived not only to effect considerable savings by the suppression of up- wards of six hundred sinecures, but also in some small degree to mitigate and equalize taxation, and to intro- duce a system of order and regularity into the public accounts to which they had long been strangers. As proved by his celebrated Compte rendu, which, though vehemently attacked, was never successfully impugned, he found a deficit of thirty-four millions when he entered office, and left a surplus of ten millions when he quitted it, — notwithstanding the heavy expenses of the Ameri- can war. In the course of his administration, however, Necker had inevitably made many enemies, who busied themselves in undermining his position at court, and overruled the weak and vacillating attachment of the king. Necker found that his most careful and valuable 1* 10 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. plans were canvassed and spoiled by liis enemies in tlie Council, where he was not present to defend them, and that, in fact, he had not and could not have fair play- while he continued excluded fiom the Caljinet. He de- manded, therefore, the entry of the Privy Council, and resij^ned when it was refused him ; though earnestly re- quested to remain by those who knew how valuable his reputation was to a discredited and unpopular court, unwilling as they were to submit to his measures or honestly adopt his plans. Necker did not choose to be so used ; and he retired to write the celel)rated work on the Administration of the Finances, which at once placed him on the pinnacle of popularity and fame. Eighty thousand copies were sold ; and henceforth Keeker was the man on whom all eyes were turned in every financial crisis, and to whom the nation looked as the only min- ister who could rescue them from the difficulties Avhich were daily thickening around them. Then followed the reckless administration of Calonne, whose sole principle Avas that of " making tilings pleasant," and who, in an incredibly short time, added 1,64G millions to the capital of the debt, and left an annual deficit of 140 millions, instead of an annual excess of ten. Brienne attacked him, and succeeded him ; but things went on from bad to worse, till, when matters were wholly past a remedy, in August, 1788, Necker was recalled and rein- stated. What he might have done, on the occasion of this second ministry, had he been a man of commanding genius and unbending will, it is useless and perhaps im- possible to conjecture. Surrounded with numberless per- plexities ; beset at once by the machinations of unscru- pulous enemies who counterworked him in secret, and by the embarrassments which every predecessor had accu- mulated in his path ; borne into power on a tide of popu- lar expectations which no popularity could enable him to satisfy ; set down to labor at the solution of a perhaps insoluble problem ; face to face with a crisis whicli might W(.dl stagger tlie most dauntless courage and confuse the clearest head ; famine around him, bankruptcy before MADAME DE STAEL. 11 him ; and all other voices gradually lost iu one " which every moment waxed louder and more terrible, — the fierce and tumultuous roar of a great people, conscious of irresistible strength, maddened by intolerable wrongs, and sick of deferred hopes " : — perhaps no human strength or wisdom could have sufficed for the require- ments of that fearful time ; perhaps no human power could then have averted the catastrophe. AVhat Keeker might have done had he acted differently and been differ- ently made, we cannot say. What he did was to struggle with manly, but not hopeful, courage for a terrible twelve mouths ; using his great credit to procure loans, spending his vast private fortune to feed the famishing populace of Paris ; commencing the final act of the long inclioate revolution, by calling the States-General ; insuring its fearful triumph by the decisive measure of doubling the numbers of the tiers-etat, and permitting the States to deliberate in common ; devising schemes of finance and taxation which were too wise to be palatable and too late to save ; composing speeches for the monarch to de- liver, which the queen and the courtiers ruined and emas- culated before they were made public ; and bearing the blame of faults and failures not his own. At length his subterranean enemies prevailed ; he received his secret conge from the king, in July, 1789, and reached Basle, re- joicing at heart in his relief from a burden of which, even to one so passionately fond of popularity as he was, the weight was beginning to be greater than the charms. The people were furious at the dismissal of their favor- ite ; the Assembly affected to be so. Riots ensued ; the Bastille was stormed ; blood was shed ; the Court was frightened ; and Necker was once more recalled. The royal messenger overtook him just as he was entering Switzerland, with the command to return to Paris and resume his post. He obeyed the mandate with a sad presentiment that he was returning to be a useless sacri- fice in a hopeless cause, but with the conviction that duty left him no alternative. His journey to Paris was one long ovation ; the authorities everywhere came out to 12 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. greet him ; the inhabitants thronged around his ]>at!i ; the popukice unharnessed his horses and drew his c;!i- riage a great part of the way ; the minister drank deeply of the intoxicating cup of national gratitude and jujpuh.r applause ; and if he relished it too keenly and regretted it too much, at least he used it nobly, and had earned it well. It would have been far better for his own fame and happiness if he had not returned to power : it could scarcely have been worse for his adopted country. His third and last administration was a series of melancholy and perhaps inevitable failures. Tlie torrent of pojular violence had become far too strong to stem. The mon- archy had fallen to a position in which it was impossible to save it. Necker's head, too, seems to have been some- what turned by his triumph. He disappointed the peo- ple and bored the Assembly. The stream of events had swept past him, and left him standing bewildered and breathless on the margin. " Les temps etaient bien changes pour lui, et il n'^tait plus ce ministre a la con- servation duquel le peuple attachait son bonheur un an auparavant. Prive de la confiance du roi, brouille avcc ses collegues, excepte Montmorin, il etait neglige par I'Assemblee, et n'en obtenait pas tous les ^gards qu'il cf,t pu en attendre. L'erreur de Xecker consistait a croire que la raison suffisait a tout, et que, manifestee avec un melange de sentiment et de logique, elle devait trionqjher de reutetement des aristocrates et de I'irritation des patriotes. Necker possedait cette raison un pen here qui juge les ecarts de's passions et les blame ; mais il man- quait de cette autre raison plus elevee et moins orgueil- leuse, qui ne se borne pas a les bklmer, mais qui sait aus- si.les conduire. Aussi, place au milieu d'elles, il nc fut pour tontcs qitune gene et point un frein. II avait blesse I'Assemblee, en lui rappelant sans cesse et avec des re- proches le soin le plus difficile de tous, celui des finances : il s'etait attire en outre le ridicule par la maniere dtuit il ]»arlait de lui-meme. Sa d(!^mission fut aeccptee avec ]>laisir ])ar tous les partis. Sa voiture fut arretee a la sor- tie du royaumc par le meme peuple qui I'avait naguere MADAME DE STAEL. 13 trainee en triomphe ; il fallut un ordre de I'Assemblee pour que la liberte d'aller en Suisse lui fut accordee. II I'obteuait Lieutot, et se retira a Coppet, pour y contem- pler de loin une revolution qu'il etait plus propre k ob- server qua conduire." * If the society of few men is more interesting or in- structive than that of the retired statesman, who, ImA'ing played his part in the world's history, stands aside to watch at leisure the further progress of the mighty dra- ma, and having served his country faithfully and labori- ously during his years of vigor and maturity has earned a right to repose in the decline of life ; who contemplates .with a mind enriched by reflection, and not soured by failure, the evolution of those great problems of human destiny quorum 2)ars magna fuit, and brings the experi- ence of the man of action to modify the conclusions of the man of thought ; and who — with that serenity of soul which is the last achievement of wisdom and of vir- tue, and which belongs only to those who have fought the good fight, striven through the angiy tempest, and reached the quiet haven — can look with a vivid interest which has no touch of scorn on the combatants who are still intent upon the battle or struggling in the storm, can aid them b}'' his counsel and cheer them by his sym- pathy ; — on the other hand, there are few sadder spec- tacles than that presented by the politician cast out from power, unable to accept his fate, and sitting unreconciled, mourning, and resentful amid the ruins of his greatness. Sucli was Necker in his last retirement. * For a long time he said he could think of nothing but the coup de foiulrc which had overthrown him. In one short year he had fallen from the pinnacle of prosperity to the depths of disgrace and neglect ; and as he had relished the former more keenly perhaps than befitted a philosopher, so he felt the latter more bitterly than became a wise man or a Christian. His mortification and regret, too, were en- hanced by a somewhat morbid conscientiousness ; ■\ he * Thiers, Eevolution Fran^aise, I. p. 199. t " Cette teneur du remolds a ete toute puissaute sur la A'ie de moa 14 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. could not shake off the idea that there was somethinir culpable in failure ; he felt that he had not been equal to the crisis, and tliat he had coniniittcd many errors ; he could not divest liimself of tlie dread that liis own meas- ures miglit have let loose that tide of national fury which M'as now so fearfully avenging the lieaped-up wrongs of centuries ; and the annoyance of failure was aggravated by the sense of guilt. Besides all this, he loved France too well not to mourn over her prospects and blush for her savagery and her crimes ; so he sat in his garden at Coppet, dejected and remorseful, pining over the past, and full of gloomy forebodings for the future ; and deaf to the consolations of his faithful wife and his adoring daughter. Gibbon, who saw much of him at this period of his career, says that he should have liked to show him in his then condition to any one whom he desired to cure of the sin of ambition. He passed whole days in gloom and silence ; all attempts to engage him in conversation were vain ; he felt like a vessel wrecked and stranded : " Othello's occupation was gone." By degrees, however, this depression left him, and he roused himself again to interest and action. He sent forth pamphlet after pamphlet of warning and remonstrance to hostile readers and unheeding ears. He offered himself to Louis as his advocate, when that monarch was brought to trial, and wlien liis offer was declined, published a gener- ous and warm defence of his old master. The remainder of his life was passed in the enjoyment of family affection, of literary labors,' and of philosophical and religious spec- ptre : il etait pret h se condamner des que le sucees ne repondait pas h. SI'S efforts?, sans cesse il se jugeait hu-menie de iionveau. On a cru (ju'il avait de I'orgueil, parcequ'il ne s'est jamais courbe ni sous I'injustice ni sous le pouvoir, niais il se prosternait devant un regret du coeur, devant le plus subtil des .scnii)uU's de I'espiit ; et ses ennemis peuvent apprendre avec certitude qu'ils out e\i le triste sucees de trouWer aniereineut son repos, cliaque fois i^u'ils I'ont accuse d'etre la cause d'un nialheur. ou de n'avoir pas su le prevenir. II est ai^e de concevoir qu' avec autaut d'inia- giuation et de sensibilite, quand I'histoire de notre vie se trouve melee aux plus terribles ev^ncniens politiques, ni la couscii nee, ni la rai- .son, ni restime nieme du monde ne i-assurent entierenient riiomine de P'jnie, .lont I'ardente pensee, dans la solitude, s'acharne sur le passe.'' — J'ic privee dc M. Xedccr, pur Madame de Stat/, p. 55. MADAME DE STAEL. J 5 Illations ; and he died in 1804 at the age of seventy-two, happy in the conviction that he was only exchanging tlie society of his cherished daugliter for that of his faithful and long respected wife, who had died some years before. On the whole, Necker was worthy of all honor and of long remembrance. History tells ns of many greater statesmen, but of few better men. Without going so far as his enthusiastic daughter, who more than once declares that his genius was bounded only by his virtue, we quite admit that his weakness and indecision were often attrib- utable to his scrupulosity, and that more pliant princi- ples and a liarder heart might occasionally have fitted him better to deal with the evil days on wdiich he had fallen. In truth, for such a crisis as that of tlie French Revolution he was somewhat too much of the preacher and the prude. He was well aware of his own deficiencies. He told Louis XVI. that if moral purity and administrative skill were all that was needed in the government, he might be able to serve him, but that if ever the times should require a genius and a will like Richelieu's, then he must resign the helm to abler hands. His portrait and his justification may be given in a single sentence: he was a good man cast upon times that required a great man : his failure was the inevitable one of mediocrity intrusted with a task which scarcely the rarest genius could have success- fully accomplished. Disinterested almost to a fault, in a peiiod of uue.xampled rapacity and corruption ; stain- less and rigid in his morals amid universal laxity and license ; ardently and unaffectedly religious, in a howl- ing wilderness of impiety and atheism ; conscientious, while all around him were profligate and sellish ; mod- erate, while every one else was excited and intemperate, — he was strangely out of place in that wild chaos of the old and new : the age demanded sterner stuff than he was made of, other services than he could render. " To be weak " (says Carlyle) " is not so miserable ; hut to he tveal::))' than oar task. Woe the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hippogryff of a Democracy, which, spurning the firm earth, nay, lash- IG LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. irifT at the very stars, no yet known* Astolpho could have riildeu !" Madame Necker, too, was in her way remarkable enough. The daughter of a Swiss Protestant minister of high re[)ute for piety and talent, and lierself early dis- tinguished botli for beauty and accomjdishments, her spotless character and superior intellectual powers at- tracted the admiration of Gibbon during his early resi- dence at Lausanne. He proposed and was accepted ; but his father, imagining that his son might well aspire to some higher connection, was very indignant, and forbade the fulfilment of the engagement. Gibbon submitted, and moralized: " I sighed as a lover" (says he) "and ol)eyed as a son, and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of the favored minister of a great kingdom, and sits in the high places of the earth." They renewed their ac- quaintance in after years, and remained fast friends till deatli. There is something to onr feelings very touching in this lasting attachment between those who had l)een lovers in their youth, but who had been })revented from uniting their lots in life; and the letters of Madame Necker, many of which are preserved, give us a most pleasing impression of both her character and powers, and convey the idea of far greater tenderness and poetry of soul than, judging from other sources of information, she was generally sujiposed to possess. Faithfully and ardently attached to her husband, whose consolation and strength she had supplied during long years of trial, prosperity, and sorrow, and who repaid her with a fond- ness even more feminine than her own, she had yet umch true, warm, and watchful affection to spare lor her early and now famous friend. In 1792 she writes to Gibbon from Coppet : — " Nous vous iittendrons ici, et les charmes de votre society nous feront oublier encore inie fois les peines de la vie. Nous nous r^unissous, M. Necker ct moi, pour vous offi-ir I'hom- mage d'une teudre amitid ; et il nie seuible qu'en me doublant ainsi, je r^pare aupres de vous tout ce que Ic teuijis ni'a foit perdre Malgrd votre silence voluntaire, malgre le si- MADAME DE STAEL. 17 leuce involontaire que j^ai gard6 avec vous, voiis n'avez jamais cesse un instant d'etre Tobjet de mon admiration, et de cette tendre et pure affection sur laquelle le temps ne peut avoir d'empire. Yos ouvrages ont fait mes delassemeus les plus doux Yos paroles sont pour moi ces fleuves de lait et de miel de la terre promise ; et je crois entendre leur doux murmure : cependant je regi'ette encore le plaisir que j'avais a vous entretouir, pendant le jour, de mes pens^es de la veille. Je vivais ainsi deux fois avec vous, dans le temps pass6 et dans le temps present; et ces temps s'embellissaient V\u\ par I'autre : — puis-je me flatter de retrouver ce bonheur dans nos allees de Coppet 1 Milles tendres amities." Again : — " Yous m'avez toujours et6 cher, Monsieur ; mais I'amitie que vous montrez a M. Necker ajoute encoi*e a celle que vous m'inspirez a tarit de titres ; et je vous aime a present d'une double affection Nous pensons souvent, Monsieur, aux joui's pleins de charmes que nous avons passees avec vous a Geneve. J'ai eprouve pendant cette epoque un sentiment nouveau pour moi, et peut-etre pour beaucoup de gens. Je reunissais dans un meme lieu, et par une favour bien rare de la Providence, une des douces et pures affections de ma jeu- nesse, avec celle qui fait mon sort sur la terre, et qui le rend si digne d'envie " Quel prix mon occur n'attache-t-il point a votre sijnte, a I'interet que votre amitie repand sur notre retraite. En ai'rivant ici, en n'y retrouvant que les tombeaux de ceux que j'ai taut aime, vous avez ^t^ pour moi couime im arbre soli- taire, dont I'ombre couvre encore le desert qui me separe des premieres annees de ma vie L'ame de M. Necker est embrasee par la douleur des evenemens, et j'ai besoin de toutes les ressources 'de I'amitie la plus tendre pour faire diversion aux tourmens qu'il endure. Votre conversation me donnera des moA'ens en ce genre, auquels il est impossible de resister ; cependant votre bonheur m'est trop cher pour que je voulusse vous faire perdre aucun des iustans de la soci6t6 dont vous jouissez. Revenez a nous quand vous serez rendu a vous-meme ; c'est le moment qui doit toujours appartenir a votre premiere et a votre derniere amie : — je ne saurais decou- vrir encore lequel de ces deux titres est le plus doux et le plus cher a mon coeur." B 18 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. When Gibbon left Lausanne for London in 1793, to undergo a painful and critical operation, Madame Xecker writes once more : — "Vous m'annonciez de Donvres, Monsieur, nne lettre par lo courier prochain ; je raticuds encore ct chaque jour avec plus d'an<(oisse. Je me consume en conjectures inquietantes. Cepcndant il fixut etre juste; vous ne pouvez pcnser k nous aussi sou vent que nous vous rapprochons de notre coeur. A Londres tout vous ramene aux iddes de ce monde, tandis que tout nous en ^loigne ici ; pres de vous les souvenirs que vous me rappeliiez m'etaient doux, ct les id^es pr^sentes que vous faisiez naitre s'y r^unissaient sans peine ; renchanement d'un grand nonibre d'annees semblait faire toucher tons les temps I'un k I'autre, avec une rapidite electrique ; vous etiez a la fois pour moi a vingt ans et a cinquante ; loin de a'ous, les differens licux que j'ai habite ne sont plus que les pierres itineraires de ma vie ; il m'avertissent de tous les milles que j'ai deja parcourus." It is difficult to believe that the woman who at the age of fifty could write Mith a simple and overflowing tenderness to the friend of her youth, could be the cold and almost rigid Puritan she is represented. There seems, howe\ er, to have been a certain reserve in her character which approached to roidcur ; she was pre-eminently a woman of principle, and Jived perhaps too much by rule and line to be easy and amiable in the general intercourse of the world. This peculiarity rendered her peculiarly unfit to manage or even to comprehend her daughter's nature, which was as full of vehemence and abandon, as hers was of strictness and precision ; and in one of her letters she intimates how much she felt the want of an " intermcdiaire ou plutot un interprete " between them. Certain it is that she contrived to give to those around her the impression of a somewhat unamiable severity of virtue and frigidity of temperament, and though univer- sally esteemed and gi-eatly admired, was too faultless to be generally loved. How such a' child as Mademoiselle Xecker came to spring from two parents who resembled her so little. MADAME DE STAEL. 19 "svere a yain conjecture. She was from the first the very incarnation of genius and of impulse. Her precocity was extraordinary, and her vivacity and vehemence both of intellect and temperament baffled all her mother's ef- forts at regulation and control. Her power of acquisi- tion and mental assimilation was immense. At twelve years of age she wrote a drama of social life, which was acted by herself and her young companions. Her re- markable talent for conversation, and for understanding the conversation of others, even at that early period, attracted the attention and excited the affectionate inter- est of many of the celebrated men who frequented her father's salon ; and in spite of jMadame Xecker's disap- proving looks, they used to gather around her, listening to her sallies, and provoking her love of argument and repartee. Gibbon, the Abbe Eaynal, Baron Grimm, and Marmontel were among these habitues of decker's soci- ety at that time, and we can well comprehend the stim- ulus which the intercourse with such minds must have given to the budding intellect of his daughter. The fri- volity of French society was already wearing away under the inlluence of the great events which were throwing their shadows before them ; and even if it had not been so, Xecker's own taste would have secured a graver and more solid tone than prevailed in common circles. The deepest interests of life and of the world were constantly under discussion. The grace of the old era still lingered ; the gravity of the new era was stealing over men's minds ; and the vivacity and brilliancy Avhich have never been wholly lost at Paris, bound the two elements to- gether in a strangely fascinating union. It was a very hot-bed for the development of a vigorous young brain like that of ^Mademoiselle Xecker. Her father, too, aided not a little to call forth her powers ; he was proud of her talents, and loved to initiate her into his own philosophic notions, and to inoculate her with his generous and lofty purposes ; and from her almost constant intercourse with him, and his tenderness and indulgent sympathy, — so different from her mother's uncaressing and somewhat 20 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. oppressive formalism, — sprung that vehement and ear- nest attachment with which she regarded him through life. This affection colored and modified her whole ex- istence ; it was in fact the strongest and most pertina- cious feeling of her nature ; and her delineation of it (in her Vic privec dc M. Ncckcr) is, in spite of its exaggera- tion, singularly beautiful and touching. It partook, per- haps, a little of the somewhat excessive vivacity which characterized all her sentiments ; * it seems in its im- pressive fervor to have resembled rather the devotion of a woman to a lover she adores, than the calm and tender love of a daughter to a cherished parent. Indeed she more than once, in her writings, regrets that they be- longed to different generations, and declares that Keeker was the only man she had ever known to whom she could have consecrated her life. At the age of twenty she had attained a dangerous reputation as a wit and a prodigy ; she was passionately fond of the brilliant society in which she lived, but set at nought its restraints, and trampled on its convention- alities and hiens^cniccs in a style that was then rare, especially among young M-omen, but which the men for- gave in consideration of her genius, and the women in consideration of her ugliness. Her intellect was preter- iiaturally developed, but her heart seems not to have been touched ; she WTote and spoke of love with earnest- ness, Avith grace, even with insight, — but as a subject of speculation and delineation only, not of deep and wo- ful experience. She made a manage dc convenancc with * "VVe remember to have heard a rather amusing exemplification of this. AVhilst living at Coppet, a coachman of her father's had overturned some of his guests, who, however, weie not injured. "When she heard of it her first thought was, " Mon Dieu ! il aura pu verser ?«o« j^trc." She rang the bell, and .summoned the unfortunate coachman instantly to her presence. As soon as he appeared, she ojiened out upon the aston- ished victim thus: " Fran(;ois ! savez-vous que je siiis une femme d'es- ]irit ? " Poor Francois, not knowing whether he stood on his head or his tail, could only answer by a bewildered stare. " Sachez, done " (she continued), " sachez done que j'ai de I'esprit — beaucoup d'e.sprit — in- finiment de I'esprit : — eh bien ! tout I'esprit que j'ai je I'emploiei-ai a vous f\iire passer votre vie dans un cacliot si javiais vous verscz mon pireJ" MADAJIE DE STAEL. 21 as cool and business-like an indifference as if she had been the most cold and phlegmatic of women. She was a great heiress, and Eric Baron de Stael was a handsome man, of noble birth and good character. The considera- tion which appears to have chiefly decided the choice, both of herself and her parents, was that he was an attache to the Swedish Embassy, was to become Ambas- sador himself, and was expected to reside iJcrmancntbf in Paris. Parisian society had now become, what it always remained, an absolute necessity of existence to Mademoi- selle Necker ; and in the arrangement she now made, she married it rather than the Baron. She never seems to have dreamed of domestic happiness, or at least of any satisfaction of the heart, in this deliberate selection of a husband ; nor, we are bound to say, does she ever com- plain of not having found what she did not seek. She probably solaced herself by the proverli, — true enougli, but we should have thought exquisitely sad to a young and ardent girl of twenty, — " Paris est le lieu du monde oil Ton se passe le mieux de bonheur." After the cere- mony, we hear very little of M. de Stael, either from his wife or her friends. Sometimes circumstances separate them ; sometimes reunite them ; they seem to have lived harmoniously, but as comfortably when apart as when together. Her husband seems to have been tacitly ig- nored, except in as far as he made her " Madame I'Am- bassadrice." The three years that followed her marriage Avere probably the happiest of her life. She was in Paris, the centre of a varied and brilliant society, where she could not only enjoy intercourse with all the greatest and most celebrated men of that remarkable epoch, but could give free scope to those wonderful and somewhat redundant convereational powers which were at all times her great- est distinction. AVe can well imagine that her singular union of brilliant fancy, solid reflection, and Frencli vivacity, must have made her, in spite of the entire ab- sence of personal beauty, one of the most attractive and fascinating of women. The times too were beyond all 22 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. otliers pregnant with that 'strange excitement wliich gives to social intercourse its most vivid charm. Every- Avliere tlie minds of men were stirred to their inmost depths ; the deei)est interests were daily under discus- sion ; the grandest events were evidently struggling to- wards tlieir birth ; the greatest intellects were bracing up their energies for a struggle " such as had not been seen since the world was"; the wildest hopes, the maddest l)rospects, the most sombre terrors, were agitating society in turn ; some dreamed of the regeneration of tlie world, — days of halcyon bliss, — a land flowing with milk and honey ; some dreaded a convulsion, a chaos, a final and irrecoverable catastrophe ; everything was hurrying on- ward to the grand denouement ; — and of this denouement Paris was to be the theatre, and Necker, the father of our heroine, the guiding and presiding genius. All her powers were aroused, and all her feelings stimulated to the utter- most ; she visited, she talked, she intrigued, she wrote ; — her first literary performance, the Lcttres svr Ho^isseau, belongs to this date. They are brilliant and warm in style; but tlieir tone is that of immaturity. These days soon passed. Then followed the Eeign of Terror. And now it was that all the sterling cpialities of IMadame de Stael's character came forth. Her feelings of disappointment and disgust must have been more vivid than those of most, for her hopes had been pre-eminently sanguine, and her confidence in her father's powers and destiny unbounded. Xow all was lost : her father was discarded, her monarch slain, her society scattered and decimated, and Paris had lost all its charms. Still she remained ; as Necker's daughter she was still beloved by many among tlie people ; as the wife of an Ambassador she was as inviolable as any one could be in those dread- ful days. "With indomitable courage, with the most daring and untiring zeal, and the most truly feminine devotion, she made use of both her titles and influence to aid the escape of her friends, and to save and succor the endangered. She succeeded in persuading to tem- porary mercy some of the most ferocious of the re vol u- MADAME DE STAEL. 23 tionary chiefs ; she concealed some of the menaced emigres in her house ; and it was not till she had ex- hausted all her resources, and incurred serious peril to herself and her children, tlmt she followed her friends into exile. Her husband, . whose diplomatic character was suspended for a while, remained in Holland, to l)e ready to resume his functions at the first favorable opening. Madame de Stael joined her friends in Eng- land, and established herself in a small house near Eich- mond, where an agreeable society soon gathered round her, consisting, besides a few English, of M. de Talley- rand, M. de Xarbonne (whose life she had saved by con- cealing him in her house, and then dismissing him witli a false passport), M. d'Arblay (who afterwards married j\Iiss Burney), and one or two female friends. Here, in spite of poverty, exile, and the mortification of failure, and the fearful tidings which reached them by nearly every post, they continued to lead a cheerful and not un- profitable life. " Their funds " (says Miss Non'is) " were not in the most flourishing condition ; and the prospect of war did not favor the continuance of such remittances as they might otherwise hope to get ; yet their national gayety seems to have boi-ne them through their difficulties with considerable credit to themselves. We are told that this little party could afford to purchase only one small carriage, which took two persons, and that M. de Xarbonne and Talleyrand alternately assumed the post of footman as they rode about to see the country, removing the glass from the back of the coach in order to join in the conversation of those within. " The neighborhood they had clioien for their residence is one naturally beautiful, and so characteristically English as to seem rac}'' and fresh to the e^-e of a foreigner ; grateful to those storm-tossed spirits must have been the scenes of rui-al peace whicli there spi'ead about them; and still more grateful the kindly English hospitality which awaited them. It was, indeed, a new element infused into the half-city, half- rural life of the then courtly suburb ; and almost every day Some fresh comer brouiiht new tidings of troul)le, and desola- tion, and narrow escapes." — p. 164. 24 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. The harmony of this little coterie continued witliout interruption : " tlie kindly hospitality" did not. The scnn- dal-lovers of England began to think evil tilings, and to whisper evil thoughts respecting the tender friendship that subsisted between Madame de Stael and jNl. de Nar- boinie ; they fancied it necessary to frown upon an affec- tion which was alien to their national habits, and some of them. Miss Burney among the rest, began to look coldly upon the colony of foreigners, wdio ventured to live in England as naturally and simply as they could have done in France. There was no foundation whatever for the vulgar insinuations that were whispered about ; but their existence can scarcely excite surprise. For in this coun- try we do not understand that man and woman, uncon- nected by family ties, can be friends without being lovers ; and what we do not understand it is our cnstom invariably to condemn. If Ave ever sanction such connections, it is on the tacit condition that the affection shall be limited in its scope, untender in its character, and reserved in its manifestations. Devoted friendship, such as that whicli subsisted between Gibbon and Madame Necker, IM. de Narbonne and Madame de Stael, Chateaubriand and Madame Eecamier,* is to us a mystery and offence. Yet it is impossible to read without the deepest sympathy the description of Chateaubriand, wheeled into the drawing- room of Madame Eecamier, when no longer able to walk thither, but unable to forego the accustomed society where lie had s[)ent every evening for so many happy and event- ful years, — and of the touching attentions of his friend to cheer his sinking spirits, and sustain and stimulate his failing faculties. INIadame de Stael herself has left us a picture of a somewhat similar friendship, — that of the Prince Castel-forte for Corinne. AVhen the re-establishment of something like regular * To all who wi.sli to comprehend this peculiar and most beautiful phase of French character, we earnestly reconmicnd a very interesting and aftectionate tribute to the memory of IStadamo Kf'camier, Avhicli appeared in Fraser's Magazine, for September, 1849, from the pen of Mrs. Austin. MADAME DE STAEL. 25 government in France in 1795 permitted the Swedish Ambassador to resume his functions, Madame de Staiil returned to Paris, and passed her time very happily for the next four years, alternately there and with her father at Coppet. Then came the establishment of the Napoleonic rule, and with that ended Madame de Stael's peace and enjoyment for nearly fifteen years. Buonaparte disliked lier, feared her, persecuted her, exiled her, and bullied and banished every one wlio paid her any attentions, or showed her any kindness. He first prohibited her residence in Paris, then in France ; and exile from her native land, and from the scene of her social pleasures and social triumphs, was to her almost as dreadful as a sentence of death. Of course she repaid her tyrannical persecutor in his own coin, and with liberal interest. AVe need not seek far for the explanation of their mutual animosity. They were antipathic in their views, in their positions, in every feeling of their hearts, in every fibre of their cliaracters. Madame de Stael was a passionate lover of constitutional liberty ; Buonaparte was bent upon its overthrow. The brilliancy and varied attractions of !Madame de Stael's society made her an actual jmissance in Paris ; and Buonaparte hated rivalry, and could " bear no brother near the throne." He loved incense and hom- age ; and, after the 18th Brumaire, she would render him neither. She would not flatter him, and he could not in liis heart despise her as he desired to do, and as he wished it to be imagined that he did. Then, whenever they met in society she bored him dreadfully, and he snubbed her I'udely. He was cold and reserved, — she was vehement and impulsive. She stigmatized him as an enemy to rational freedom ; and he pronounced her to be an in- triguing and exaltee woman. They both loved influence dearly ; and neither would succumb to the influence of the other. All tlie Emperor's power and prestige could not extort from the woman one instant of submission or applause, — all the woman's weapons of fascination and persuasion were wasted and blunted on the impenetrable cuirass of the despot. Their hatred was something' in- 2 26 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. stinctive and almost physical, — as natural and incnraLle as tliat of cat and dot^. ]\I,'idame de .Stael has left a very graphic description of the impression he produced upon lier : — " Loin dc me rassurcr, en voyant Buonaparte plus souvent il m'iiitimidsiit chaque jour davantage. Je sentais confme- went qii aucune emotion ducoenr ne pouvait cif/ir sur lui. [Hinc ilhe liicrj-mse : the lady felt herself disarmed before the man of cold heart.] II regarde une creature humaiue commc un fait on comma une chose, mais non comme un sembhihle. II ne hait pas plus qnil n'aime ; il n'y a que lui pour lui ; tout le reate des creatures sont des chififres. La force de sa volenti consiste dans I'imperturbable calcul de son ^goisme. .... Ses succes tiennent autant aux qualites qui lui man- quent, qu'aux talents qu'il possede. Ni la piti6, ni I'attrait, ni la religion, ni I'attachement a une idee quelconque, ne sau- raient le detourner de sa direction pinncipale. Chaque fois que je I'entendais parler, j'etais frapp^e de sa superiorite ; elle n'avait pourtant aucun rapport avec celle des honnnes instruits et cidtives par I'etude ou la societe, tels que I'An- gleterre et la France peuvent en offrir des exemples. Mais ses discours indiquaient le tact des circonstances, comme le chassetir a celui de sa proie. Quelquefois il racontait les faits pohtiques et militaires de sa Tie d'une faQon tres-int^- ressante ; il avait meme, dans les recits qui permettaieut la gaiete, un pen de I'imagination italienne. Cependant rien ne pouvait triomplier de mon ^loignement pour ce que j'aper- cevais en lui. Je sentais dans son ame vne epee froide et tranchante qui glar^ait en blessnnt : je sentais dans son es- prit une ironie profonde a laquelle rien de grand ni de beau, pas meme sa propre gloire, ne pouvait ^chapper ; car il meprisait la nation dont il voulait les suffrages : et nulle etin- celle d'enthousiasme ne se melait a son besoin d'etonner I'es- p^ce humaine. " Ce fut dans I'intervalle eutre le retour de Buonaparte [d'ltalie] et son depart pour I'Egj'pte, c'est ^ dire, vers la fin de 1797, que je le vis ])lasieurs fois a Paris ; et jamais la dif- ficulte de rei^nrer que feprortvais en sa presence ne put se dis- siper. J'etais un jour a table eutre lui et i'Abb^ Sieves : sin- guli^re situation, si j'avais pu pr^voir Tavenir ! J'examinais avec attention la figure de Buonaparte ■, niais chaque fois qu'il MADAME DE STAl^L. 27 decouvrait en moi des regards observateurs, il avait I'art d'oter a ses yeux toute expression, comme s'ils fussent deveniis do marbre. Son visage etait alors immobile, excepte un sourire vague qu'il pla9ait sur ses levres a tout hasard, pour de- router quiconque voudrait observer les sigues exterieures de sa peusee." * During her fourteen years of exile, Madame de Stael led a wandering- life ; sometimes residing at Coppet ; ever and anon returning for a short time to France, in hopes of being allowed to remain there unmolested, but soon receiving a new oi-der to quit. She visited Germany twice, Italy once, and at length reached England, by way of Eussia, in 1812. It was at this period of her life that she produced the works which have immortalized her, — • De la Litterature, De V Allcmagne, and Corinne, and en- joyed intercourse with the most celebrated men of Eu- rope. Nevertheless they were years of great wretchedness to her; the charms of Parisian society ,-|- in wliich she lived, and moved, and had her being, were forbidden to her ; she was subjected to the most annoying and petty, as well as to the most bitter and cruel, persecutions ; one by one her friends were prevented from visiting her, or punished with exile and disgrace if they did visit her ; she was reduced nearly to solitude, — a state whitih she herself describes as, to a woman of her vivacious feelings and irrepressible hcsoin d'epanchement, almost worse than * Considerations sur la Revolution rran9aise, II. 187. + " Je ne dissimule point que le^ sejour de Paris m'a toujours seml)Ie le plus agreable de tous : j'y suis nee ; j'y ai passe nion enfance et ma premiere jeunesse ; la generation qui a connu mon pere, les amis qui ont traverse avec nous les perils de la Revolution, c'est \k seulement que je puis les retrouver. Get amour de la patrie qui a saisi les ames les plus fortes, s'empare plus vivement encore de nous quand les gouts de I'esprit se trouvent reunis aux afFectioiis du cceur et aux habitudes de I'imagina- tion. La conversation Fran^aise n'existe qu'a Paris, et la conversation a ete, depuis mon enfance, mon plus grand plaisir. J'eprouvais une telli> douleur a la crainte d'etre privee de ce sejour, que ma raison ne pouvait rien contre elle. J'etais alors dans toute la vivacite de la vie, et c'est precisement le besoin des jouissances animees qui conduit le plus sou- vent au desespoir, car il rend la resignation bien difficile, et sans clle on ne pent supporter les vicissitudes de I'existence." — Dix Annies d'Exil, p. 61. 28 LITERAHY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. death* The description of her sufferings during this part of her life, which she gives iu her Dix Annees d'Exil, renders that book one of the most harassing and l^ainful we ever read ; and when we add to all that Buo- naparte made her endure, the recollection of the incalcu- lable amount of individual miscliief and anguish which lie intiicted on the two thousand peaceful English travellers, whom he seized in defiance of all law and justice, and detained for twelve of the best years of their life in French prisons, we are compelled to feel that the irri- tating torments and privations which he was himself afterwards to undergo at St. Helena, — unworthy and oppressive as they sometimes were, — were nothing but a well-proportioned and richly merited retribution. Several of the great men whose society she enjoyed during these memorable years of wandering have leit on record their impression of her genius and manners ; and it is curious to observe how uniform and self-consistent this impression everywhere was. She seems to have ex- cited precisely the same emotions in the minds both of German literati and of English politicians, — vast admira- tion and not a little fatigue. Her conversation was bril- liant iu the extreme, but apt to become monologue and declamation. She was too vivacious for any but French- men : her intellect M'as ahvays in a state of restless and vehement activity ; she seemed to need no relaxation, and to permit no repose.'f- In spite of her great knowledge, * " On s'etonnera peut-etre que je compare I'exil a la mort ; mais de grands hommes de I'antiquite et des temps modernes ont succoniLe a cette peine. On rencontre plus de braves centre I'echafauds que contre la ])erte de sa patrie." — Ibid., p. 79. She saj's elsewhere : " Les echafauds pen vent a la fin reveiller le courage ; mais les chagrins domestiques de tout genre, resultat du hannis- f ement, affaiblissent la resistance, et portent seulement h. redouter la disgrace du souverain qui peut vous infliger une existence si mal- heureuse." — Consideratimis sur, etc., II. 285. t JIadame de Stael's principal enjoyment was always in society ; she l;ad little relish for, or appreciation ot, the beauties of natiire. "0 for the rivulet in the Kue du Bac ! " she exclaimed, when some one pointed out to her the glorious Lake of Geneva, ilany years later she said to M. Mole, "Si ce n'etait le respect humain, jc ')t'ouvrirais pas ma fcneire ]Mur voir la baie de Kaples ; tandis que je lerais cinq cents lieues pour aller causer avec un homme d'esprit." MADAJIE DE STAEL. 29 her profound and sagacious reflections, her spaskling wit, and her singular eloquence, she nearly always ended by wearying even her most admiring auditors : she left them no peace ; she kept them on the stretch ; she ran them out of breath. And there were few of them who were not in a condition to relish the piquant mot of Talley- rand, who, when some one hinted surprise that he who had enjoyed the intimacy of such a genius as IMadame de Stael could find pleasure in the society of such a con- trast to her as ^Madame Grant, answered in that delib- erate and gentle voice which gave point to all his sharpest sayings, " II faut avoir aime IMadame de Stael pour sa- vourer le bonheur d'aimer une bete ! " Schiller, whom she infested dreadfully during her stay in Weimar in 1803 - 4, writes thus to Goethe : — " Madame de Stael you will find quite as you have, f^ priori, construed her : she is all of a piece ; there is no adventi- tious, false, pathological speck m her. Hereby it is that, not- Avith standing the immeasurable difference in temper and thought, one is perfectly at ease with her, can hear all from her* and say all to her. She represents French culture in its purity, and imder a most interesting aspect. In all that we name philosophy, therefore in all highest and ultimate ques- tions, one is at issue with her, and remains so in spite of all arguing. But her nature, her feeling, is better than her metaphysics ; and her fine understanding rises to the rank of genius. She insists on explaining everything, on seeing into it, measuring it ; she allows nothing dark, inaccessible ; whither- soever her torch cannot throw its light, there nothing exists for her. Hence follows an aversion, a horror, for the transcen- dental philosophy, which in her view leads to mysticism and siiperstition. This is the carbonic gas in which she dies. For what we call poetry there is no sense in her ; for in such works it is only the passionate, the oratorical, and the intellectual that she can appreciate : yet she will endure no falsehood there, only does not always recogiiize the true. " You will infer from these few words that the clearness, decidedness, and rich vivacity of her nature cannot but affect one favorably. Ones only grievance is the altogether unprecedented glibness of her tongue : you must make yourself all ear if you would follow her." 30 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. A niontli afterwards lie is beginning to feel weary and satiated. " Yoni' exposition" (he writes to Goethe) "has refreshed me and nourislied me. It is liighly proper that by sucli an act at this time, yon express your ccntrndiction of our im- portitnnte visitreKS : the cnse would gi'ow intolerable else IkMUi; sick at present, and j^loomy, it seems to me impossilile tliat I should ever hold such discourses again Had she taken lesson of Jean Paid, she would not have stayed so long in Weimar : let her try it for other three weeks at her peril." Two months later he closes his notices of the lady by this merciless sarcasm : " I have not been at all well : the weather is not kind to me ; besides, ever since the clc~ 2')r(rture of Madcivic, I have felt no othcrvAse than as if I had risen from a severe sickness." Goethe's account of her is somewhat more deliberate and patient, but veiy similar in the main. He writes in his Dicldung und Wahrlicit : — " The great qualities of this high-thinking and high-feeling axithoress lie in the view of every one ; and the results of her jouniey through Germany testify sufficiently how she applied her time thei'e. Her objects were manifold : she wished to know Weimar, — to gain accurate acquaintance with its moral, social, literary aspects, and whatever else it offered ; further, however, she herself also wished to be known ; and endeavored, therefore, to give her own views currency, no less than to search out our mode of thouglit. Neither coidd she rest satisfied even here : she must also work upon the senses, upon the feelings, upon the spirit ; must strive to awaken a certain activity or vivacity, with the want of which she reproached lis. " TInxnnq no notion of ti'hat D.uty means, and to what a silent, collected postuj'e he that undertakes it must restrict himself, she was evermore for striking in, for instantaneoush* produ- cing an effect. In society, she required there to be constant talking and discom'sing " To phdosopliize in society, means to talk with vivacity aV)out insoluble problems. This washer peculiar pleasure and ])nssi(m. Naturally, too, she was wont to carry it, in such speaking and counter-speaking, up to those concerns of thought MADAME DE STAEL. 31 and sentiment wliieh properly should not be spoken of, except between God and the individual. Here, moreover, as woman and Frenchwoman, she had the habit of sticking fast on main positions, and, as it were, not hearing Tightly what the other said. Bv all these things the evil spirit was awakened in me, so that 1 would treat whatever was advanced no otherwise than dialecticallj and problematically, and often by stift- necked contradictions brought her to despair; when she for the first time grew rightly amiable, and in the most brilliant manner exhibited her talent of thinking and replying. " ]\Iore than once I had regular dialogues with her, our- selves two ; in which likewise, however, she was burdensome, according to her fashion ; never granting, on the most important topics, a moment of rejlection, but passionately demanding that we should despatch the deepest concerns, the weiglitiest oc- currences, as lightly as if it were a game at shuttlecock." * Some years after her first visit to Germany, she came to England, and Sir James Macldntosh, who saw much of her, thus describes her: — " On my return I found the whole foshionable and literary worjd occupied with Madame de Stael, the most celebrated woman of this or perhaps am^ age She treats me as the person whom she most delights to honor: T am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon ; I have, in consequence, dined with her at the houses of almost all the Cabinet Ministers. She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation ; she has every soi't of talent, and would be uni- versally popular if, in society, she were to confine herself to her inferior talents, — pleasantry, anecdote, and literature, — w-hich are so much more suited to conversation than her elo- quence and genius. "t Lord Byron also saw much of her hoth in London in 1813 and at Diodati in 1816. In the notes to the fourth canto of Childe Harold, he records her virtues and attrac- tions in a piece of elaborate fine writing, fit only for a * It is interesting, after reading what Schiller and Goethe thought of ?.Iadanie de Stael, to read what the lady, in lier turn, thought of them (See her U AUemagiie, Part II. ch. vii. and viii.). She was more compli- uieutary than the gentlemen. + i^Jenioirs of Mackintosh, II. 264. 32 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. tombstone, and which would be pronounced inflated and tasteless even there. In his Diary and Correspondence, however, we meet with many hasty references to her, not intended for the public eye, and therefore more likely to convey his genuine impressions. " I saw Curran pre- sented to Madame de Stael at Mackintosh's; it was the grand confluence of the Illione and the Saone ; they were both so damned ugly that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland could have taken up respectively such residences Madame de Statil-Holstein has lost one of her young barons, who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant, — kilt and killed in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhausen. Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be ; but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could, — write an essay upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance and somebody to see or read how much grief becomes her To-day I dine with INIackintosh and Mrs. Stale (as John Bull may be pleased to denomi- nate Corinne), whom I saw last night at Covent Gar- den, yawning over the humor of Falstaff. .... To-day (Tuesday) a very pretty billet from Madame la Baronne de Stael-Holstein. She is pleased to be much pleased with my mention of her and her last work in my notes, I spoke as I thought. Her works are my delight, and so is she herself, — for half an hour. But she is a woman by herself, and has done more intellectually than all the rest of them together ; she ought to have been a man Asked for Wednesday to dine and meet the Stael. I don't much like it ; she always talks of my- self or herself, and I am not (except in soliloquy, as now) much enamoured of either subject, — especially of one's works. What the devil sliall I say about Be VAUc- magne ? I like it prodigiously ; but unless I can twist my admiration into some fantastical expression, she won't believe me ; and I know by experience that I shall be overwhelmed by fine things about rhyme, etc The Stael was at the other end of the table, and less loquacious than heretofore. We are now very good MADAME DE STAEL. 33 friends ; though she asked Lady Melbourne whether I really had any honJwmmie. She might as well have asked that question before she told C. L. 'c'est un demon.' True enough, but rather premature, for she could not have found it out." When in Switzerland, he wrote : " Madame de Stael has made Coppet as agreea- ble as society and talent can make any place on earth. .... She was a good woman at heart, and the clever- est at bottom, but spoilt by a wish to be — she knew not what. In her own house she was amiable ; in any other person's you wished her gone, and in her own again." These extracts will serve to show what Madame de Stael was in miscellaneous society ; in the more intimate relations of life few persons were ever more seriously or steadfastly beloved. She was an excellent hostess, and one of the most warm, constant, and zealous of friends ; on the whole, an admirable, lovable, but somewhat over- powering woman. On the abdication of Napoleon she rushed back to Paris, and remained there with few inter- vals till her death, filling her drawing-rooms with the brilliant society which she enjoyed so passionately, and of which she was herself the brightest ornament. But she survived the restoration of the Bourbons only a short time ; her constitution had been seriously undermined by the fatigues and irritations she had undergone, and she died in July, 1817, on the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, at the age of fifty-one. Her last literary produc- tion was the Considerations sur la Revolution Fran<^aise, which she began with a view of vindicating her father's memory, and intended as a record of his public life. We have no idea of attempting any criticism, or even any general description, of her various works ; such a task, if executed with care and completeness, would carry us far beyond our limits ; if discharged in a hasty and perfunctory manner, would be worse than unsatisfactory. The peculiar charm of her writings arises from the mix- ture of brilliancy and depth which they exhibit : a bril- liancy which is even more than French, a profundity which is almost German. You cannot read a page with- 2* o 34 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. out meeting with some reflection wliich you wish to transfer to your memory, or your commonj)lace Look.* Tliese reflections are not always sound ; Lut tliey are always ingenious and suggestive. L'AUcmofjnc, tliough incomplete and often superficial, is perhaps as nearly a true delineation of Germany as France could take in, and sliows wonderful power of thought, as Corinne shows wonderful depth of insiglit and of feeling. These are the two works — Cori7i7ie especially — by which she will live ; and both were the production of her mature years ; she was thirty-eight wli en she wrote the latter, and forty- two when she finished the former. Yet in both there is the passionate earnestness, the vehement eloquence, the generous warmth of youth. From first to last there w^as nothing frivolous, artificial, or heartless in Madame de Stacl : she had nothing French about her, except her untiring vivacity and her sparkling wit.i* On tlie con- trary, a tone of the profoundest melancholy nms through- out all her writings. A short time before her death she said to Chateaubriand, " Je suis ce que j'ai toujours ete — vive et triste." It is in Corinne, especially, but also in De/j'ihine, that we trace that indescribable sadness * For example, we have just met with the followinfi; in her chapter " de I'amoiir dans le mariage " (VAIIemogne). "La gloire elle-meme ne sanrait etre pour line femme qw'un dcuil iclatant du bonheur." In Corinne we find: " Ce sontles caracteres passionnes, bien plus que les caracteres legers, qui sont eapaldes de folie." " L'aspeot de la nature enseigne la resignation, mais ne pent rien sur I'incertitude." "Les Eomains n'avaient pas cet aride iirincipe d'utilite, qui fertilise quelques coins de terre de plus, en fra]ipant de sterilite le vaste domaine du senti- ment et de la pensee." "La vie religieuse est un combat, et non pas un hymne." + It was rather esprit than what we generally mean by "wit" : she was eminently spiritiirUc in her conversation, but not a sayerof bmism of s. Few of her repartees or witticisms have been recorded. One indeed we . remember, which shows how formidable she might have been in tliis line. An unfortunate man, finding himself seated at dinner between her and her fiiend JIadame Recamier, could think of nothing better to open the conversation with than the fade compliment, " Me voici entre res])rit et la beaute." Now Madame de Stael neither cho.se that shf hhould be considered destitute of beauty nor that her friend should be considered destitute of wit : she was therefore far from f attered by the rapiirochement, and turned round upon her smirking victim with, " Oui ! et sans posseder ni I'une ni I'autre ! " . JIADAME DE ST.\EL. 35 which seems inseparable from noble minds, — the crown of thorns which genius must ever wear. It was not with her, as with so many, the dissipation of youthful illu- sions, the disenchantment of the ideal life. On the contrary, the spirit of poetry, the fancies and paintings of enthusiasm, were neither dimmed nor tarnished for her, even hy the approach of death ; she could dream of earthly happiness, and tlursted for it still ; but she felt that she had never tasted it as she Avas capable of con- ceiving it ; she had never loved as she could love and yearned to love ; of all lier faculties, she touchingly com- plained, " the only one that had been fully developed was the faculty of suffering." Surrounded by the most brilliant men of genius, beloved by a host of faithful and devoted friends, the centre of a circle of unsurpassed at- tractions, she was yet doomed to mourn " the solitude of life." No affection filled up her whole heart, called forth all her feelings, or satisfied her passionate longings after felicity ; the full union of souls, which she could imagine so vividly and paint in such glorious colors, was denied to her, — and all the rest " availed her nothing." With a mind teeming with rich and brilliant thoughts, with a heart melting with the tenderest and most passionate emotions, she had no one — no OXE — to appreciate the first and reciprocate the last; she had to live "the inner life " alone ; to tread the weary and dusty thoroughfares of existence, with no hand clasped in hers, no sympathiz- ing voice to whisper strength and consolation when the path grew rough and thorny, and the lamp burnt flicker- ing and low. N'ay more, she had to " keep a stern tryste with death," — to walk towards the Great Darkness with none to bear her company to the margin of the cold stream, to send a cheering voice over the black waters, and to give her rendezvous upon the farther shore. What wonder then that she sometimes faltered and grew faint under the solitary burden, and " sickened at the unshared light ! " The consolation offered by a poet of our own day to the sorrowing children of genius did not always suffice for her ; rarely at all times can it suffice for any. 3G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. " Because the few with signal virtue crowned, The heights and jiinnacles of human mind, Sadder and wearier tlian the rest are found, Wish not thy soul less wise or less refined. True tiiat the small delights which every day Cheer and distract the jiilgrim, are not theirs ; True, that, though free from Passion's lawless sway, A loftier being brings severer cares. Yet have they special pleasures, even mirth, By those undreamed of who have only trod Life's valley smooth ; and if the rolling earth To their nice ear have many a painful tone. They know man doth not live by joy alone, But by the presence of the power of God." * Two of the most remarkable men of France were as- sociated with Madame de Staiil Loth socially and histor- ically. Both lived in her intimacy for a longer or shorter period, and both were closely connected with the great events with which she, either as an actor or a sufi'erer, ■was mixed up. Talleyrand was her intimate of the eighteenth and Benjamin Constant of the nineteenth century. They were two of the most distinctive and strongly marked characters of their day, and as such would well deserve a fuller delineation and analysis than we can afford them. Each was the type of a class and of a genus, and we question whether strict justice has yet been done to either. Talleyrand has been especially maltreated by common fame. By most who know his name, he is regarded as a second Machiavelli, — as little understood and as ruthlessly slandered as the Jfirst, — an intriguing and unprincipled diplomatist, — a heartless persiflcur, — the very incarnation of political profligacy and shameless tergiversation. His portraits have almost all been drawn by his foes, — by those whom he had baffled, or by those whom he had deserted ; by those wliom his pungent sarcasms had wounded, or whom his superior address had mortified ; and his own memoirs, from his own hand, are to remain a sealed book till, ly tlie death of every one whom they could compromise (or, say his enemies, who could contradict them), they have become interesting to the historian alone. Talley- * E. M. Milnes, Poems of ifany Years. MADAME DE STAEL. 37 rand was something very different from the popular con- ception of him.* He was a profound thinker ; he had strong political opinions, if he liad no moral principles ; he was at least as bold, daring, and decided in action as he was sagacious in council ; his political and social tact — wliich is wisdom so quick and piercing as to seem unreasoning — had the promptitude and certainty of an instinct ; and living in constant intercourse, hostile or friendly, witli the ablest men of that stirring epoch, he acquired an undisputed ascendency over them all, by the simple influence of a keener intellect and a subtler tongue. Far from being devoid of political predilections and con- victions, liis whole career, from the time he entered the States-General, showed that botli were very strong in him. He had thought deeply and he felt keenly. That much of personal feeling entered into the motives which deter- mined him to the course he took, and that much of ego- tism and scorn of his fellow-men mingled with and alloyed his lofty and persevering ambition, cannot be denied, and is not to be wondered at. We must read his character and career by the light which his early liistory throws over it, and we shall find there enougli amply to explain both his steady preference for constitutional liberty after the English model, and the ardor and determination with which he threw himself into the most active ranks of the revolutionists. He had suffered too much under the old regime not to desire to sweep away a system wliich per- mitted such injustices as he had endured. He had seen too thoroughly the hollowness and rottenness of every- thing around him, — the imbecile feebleness of the Court, the greediness and impiety of the Church, the selfish and heartless profligacy of the higher ranks, — to be of opin- ion that there was much worth preserving in the existing state of things. He had too fine a fancy and too powerful a mind not to participate in some measure in the hopes * To guard myself against the possihle imputation of having borrowed from the recent work of Sir Henry Bulwer, I may mention that this sketch of Talleyrand was originally printed fifteen years ago. S8 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. then entertained l)y all the more "erected spirits" of the nation, of an era of ploi'ious social regeneration. He Mas a bishop against liis M-ill ; he had lived in the very centre of all the elegant immoralities of I'aiis; and lie had studied and conversed with Yoltaiie. He was the eldest son of one of the noblest families of Fiance, but having been lamed by an accident arising from the combined neglect of parents and menials, he was compelled, by one of those acts of family tyranny then by no means urcrm- mon, to forego his birthright, and accej^t the destiny of yonnger sons in that age and of that rank,- — namelj', to go into the Church. Without being allowed to return to the paternal loof, he was transferred from his nurse's cottage to the ecclesiastical seminary of St. Sulpice, and thence to the College of the Sorbonire. He was made a priest without the slightest attention either to his wislies or his character. Boiling over with youthful passions, with healthy energy, with splendid talents, with mun- dane tastes, he was condemned by an act of flagrant in- justice to a life of celibacy, of inaction, and of religious duties which, in the case of one so devoid of devotional sentiment as he was, could only be the most loathsome and wearisome hypocrisy. "What Avonder that a mighty wrong like this should have sunk into his mind, and greatly modified his views and feelings, even if it did not sour his temper ! At college he brooded over his morti- fication, looked his destiny in the face, and deliberately took his course. "With rare powers like his, he felt that obscurity Avas impossible, but that he must rise by a clif- ferent ladder from the one he M'ould himself have chosen. He resolved to triumph over those who had degraded him, but to whom he knew himself in eveiy vray superior ; and he prepared himself to do so by sedulous and earnest study. He spoke little, he reflected much. Naturally botli intelligent and ardent, he taught himself to become M-ell-informed, reserved, and self-restrained; and from the training which the Catholic Church has always giA en to its servants, he learned that untiring and watchful pa- tience, that deep insight into men, that quick appreciation MADAME DE STAEL. 39 of circumstances, those gentle and insinuatino- manners, that habitual quietude, that prompt and well-timed activ- ity, which were his most distinguishing qualities througli life, and liis chief instruments of success. When he liad completed his theological studies he entered the world, — to enjoy it and subdue it. He was known as the Abbe de Perigord. " Contrarie dans les gouts " (says Mignet), " il y entra en mecontent, pret ay agir en revolutionnaire. 11 y obtint, des I'abord, la reputation d'un homme avec lequel il fallait compter, et qui, ayant un beau nom, un grand calme, infiniment d'esprit, quelque chose de gracieux qui captivait, de raalicieux qui effrayait,* beaucoup d'ardeur contenue par une prudence sufifisante et conduite par une extreme adresse, devait necessairement reussir." He soon became agent-general for the clergy, — an office of great influence and importance, — and subse- quently bishop of Autun, and when the States-General met, he was elected as deputy from his diocese. He was now thirty-five years of age. He at once embraced the popular side', and became prominent and powerful. His voice was raised in favor both of liberty of thought and of equality of civil rights. He supported the union of the three orders, — the first great step of the revolution ; he persuaded the Assembly to decide against those man- dats imperatifs, which would have made its members the mere slaves and mouthpieces of their constituents ; he was one of eight who were selected to prepare the New Constitution which was to regenerate the country ; he was appointed to report upon a system of National Edu- cation, and the memoir which he presented to the Assem- * Talleyrand, at his first entrance into societ}', amied himself with that fine and subtle wit which has made him so renowned, and by one or two crushing repartees made himself both respected and feared. But in general at this period his sayings were distinguished rather for finesse than severity. He was in the salon of the Due de Choiseul when the Duchess De N was announced. She was a lady whose adventures ■were then the talk of all Paris, and an exclamation of oh ! oh ! escaped the Abbe, so loud that tlie Duchess who entered at that moment heard it. As soon as the company were seated round the talile, the lady said, " Je voudrais bien savoir, j\I. I'Abbe, pourcpioi vous avez (lit oh ! oh ! lorsque je suis entree ? " " Point, Madame " (replied the Abbe), " vous avez mal eutendu. J'ai dit ah ! ah ! " 40 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. l)ly not only obtained an instant and vast celebrity, but formed the foundation of the plan then adopted, and which exists with little chan_<4e to the ])resent day. Vnt- sides these labors he paid special attention to the finances, . which were then in a most deplorable condition ; he su])- ported the proposals of Necker; and it was on his motion that the Assembly resolved on the seizure and sale of all ecclesiastical property as l)elon^inf( to the state, and on the reduction of the clert^y from the position of indt;- pendent proprietors to that of salaried cmp/oi/&. In doinj^ this he proposed to improve the condition of the inferior clergy, while he hoped at the same time to avert a national bankruptcy. At the same time he supported the equalization of imposts, and the entire sui)pressi(jn of all feudal and seignorial riglits. Finally, he was a])- pointed by his colleagues to draw up an address to tlie nation explaining and justifying the proceedings of the Assembly, and so admirably did he discharge tliis func- tion, that he was shortly afterwards elected President by a largo majority. What might have lieen his course during the subse- quent and more stormy phases of the devolution we cannot pretend to conjecture. Happily for liim he was saved from having to take a part in scenes where almost any part would have been questionable, objectionable, and unsafe. He had resigned, or rather abjured, his clerical functions, and early in 1792 Avas sent to England on a diplomatic mission, the object of which was to sub- stitute a national for a court alliance. Thirty-eight years afterwards, at the age of seventy-six, he was again ac- credited to the same country on a similar errand. His first and last diplomatic acts at least were consistent and in unison. He remained in England (with the exception of a short visit to Paris) till the following year, when Pobespierre proscriljcd him, and shortly afterA\'ards ]\Ir. Pitt ordered him to quit the country in twenty-four hours. His residence here, chiefly in the society of Madame de Stael, increased his admiration for our insti- tutions, but he was ill-received in the higher circles, — ]\L\DAME DE STAEL. 41 being regarded partly as an apostate priest, partly as a reputed profligate, partly as an intriguing revolutionist. But those who knew him at this period describe him as one of the most fascinating of companions, quiet, gentle, caressing, and attentive, — speaking little, but when he did speak, compressing volumes into a single phrase. Champfort relates that when Ehulhiere observed, " Je ne sais pourquoi j'ai la reputation d'etre mediant : je n'ai fait qu'une mechancete dans ma vie," Talleyrand, who had taken no part in the conversation, and sat at a distant corner of the room, asked, with delil>erate significance, "Et quand finira-t-elle ?" On another occasion, when relating some atrocity of one of his colleagues, his au- ditor remarked, " Mais I'homme qui a pu commettre une pareille action est capable d'assassiner." " D'assassiner, non " . . . . (said Talleyrand, reflectively) . . . . " d'em- poisonner, oui." * Proscribed in France, and banished from England, M. de Talleyrand went to America, and, as a Memoir which he afterwards read before the National Institute testifies, did not waste his time while there. But when a better day began to dawn after the overthrow of the Reign of Terror, Chenier, at the instigation of INIadame de Stael, procured a decree of the Convention, erasing his name from the list of emigrants and permitting his return. He re-entered France, and after a short interval was made IMinister of Foreign Affairs under the Directory ; but as they became more and more imbecile, and a change more and more inevitable and desirable, he was, or con- triv'ed to be, dismissed in the early part of 1799; and thus found himself at liberty to assist Buonaparte in his revolution of the 18th Brumaire, which it is difficult not to regard as, under the circumstances, the greatest ser- vice he ever rendered to his country. ]\Iadame de Staiil never forgave his adhesion to the popular young hero.-f * A friend liaving spoken of Sifeyes as "im homme profond," — " Profond .... ce n'est pas le mot " (said Talleyrand) ; "c'est creux, tres creux, que vous voulez dire." + When "Delphine" appeared, Madame de Stael was currently re- ported to have drawn both herself and M. de Talleyrand therein, — her- 42 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. But Talleyrand saw that France was perishing for want of a government ; that her political notabilities were neither honest enough, wise enough, nor able enough to rescue and regenerate her ; disorder in the finances, dis- organization in the interior, and disaster abroad, all clam- ored loudly for a change ; and in the vigorous intellect, gigantic sagacity, and iron will of the young conqueror of Italy, Talleyrand, like most Frenchmen, recognized the Man for the crisis, — I'homme n^cessaire, as Necker termed him. The mode in which the Directory and its councils were overthrown was audacious and violent enough ; but the result went far to jiistify the actors. Order at home and victory abroad followed in quick suc- cession ; tJie finances were restored ; confidence Avas re- awakened ; the funds rose ; * an admirable system of administration was established ; France was at once recon- stituted, after ten years of misery, crime, and chaos ; and the period from 1800 to 1807, during which Talleyrand was the principal minister, was beyond example the most glorious in her annals. It is true that mucli of the work of Talleyrand's earlier years Avas upset : much however remained indestructible. It is true that under Xapoleon France enjoyed only the shadow of those. Parliamentary institutions to which Talleyrand was sincerely attached, and which formed part of the original constitution urged npon and adopted by the First Consul ; but probably by this time the experienced Minister had begun to feel that at that crisis a man was more important tlian an institu- tion, — which it must be allowed had not been attended self as Delphine, him as JIadame de Venion. Talleyrand met her shortly afterwards, and paid her the usual compliments on the perform- ance, adding, in his gentlest and sweetest voice, the keen sarca.'ni, " On m'assureque nous y sommes tons les deux, vonsetmoi, dejuif:esenfcmincs." * An enemy of Talleyrand having hinted to Buonaparte that the e.\- abbe had become very rich, and probably by no very creditable means, the First Consul took him to task in his usual rude and briisqirochait k son pouverneineiit en 1814 : raliandon de la cocarde tri- cnlorn ; les restrictions apportees aux paranties etablies par la Chavte ; reloienement dans lequel le parti constitutionnel avait ete tenii des pmplois publics, presqu' uniquenicnt accordes a d'anciens royalistes ; rijrnorance et la maladresse avec laquell^ on avait donne la France a n'gir ;\ dos hommos nourris dans rt'nii,2;ration, etranrjers aux idees et aux .sentimens de la nation nouvelle. qui avaiont alarme ses interets et sou- leve ses haines ; et I'absence d'un niinist^re homogene, fonnant un con- seil responsable. diriee par un president, et capable de gouverner." — MiGNET, Notice Misiorique. MADAME DE STAEL, 47 his management of the democratic spirit, and that the adoption of the policy of the Legitimists would be fatal to him. The king became anxious to get rid of his import- unate councillor, and by way of hinting to him the propriety of retiring, he asked him one day, how far it was to Valenc^ay, the country-seat of M. de Talleyrand. "Je ne sais pas au juste. Sire" (replied the minister), " mais il doit avoir environ le double du distance d'ici a Gand " ; intimating that before he, Talleyrand, could reach Valenqay, Louis, deprived of the safeguard of his counsel, would be again an exile. From the time of his retirement he took his place in the ranks of the Liberal opposition in the Chamber of Peers, and steadily set his face against the . oppression and reactionary follies of the Eestoration. In 1830 what he had long foreseen took place : a new revolution, patiently toiled for during fifteen years of selfishness and blunders, again drove the Bourbons into exile, and sum- moned the veteran diplomatist into public life once more. He gave Louis Philippe the benefit of his multifarious experience, and accepted the embassy to England, Mith the view of cementing that alliance between the two countries which had been the earliest object of his official life. That done, he once more retired into privacy ; and died at the age of eighty-four, with faculties and cheer- fulness alike unimpaired, — though no man had lived through sceiies more calculated to crush the one and ex- haust the other. The great crime against political morality with which he is reproached — his inconstancy — seemed at all times to lie very lightly on his conscience. He spoke of his changes without tlie smallest embarrassment or shame, alleging that what he served was not this or that gov- ernment, but his country, under the political form which it had put on for the time being ; that he was faithful to each administration so long as it suited France, and wisely and honestly consulted her interests ; and that he never deserted any till it liad become tlie duty of every good citizen to do so. He has also been severely v& 48 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. proaclied with avarice and corruption, and probably the charge was not without foundation ; but there is no rea- son to believe that he ever betrayed or sold his country or his feniployers for his own private interests ; and at a period when it was customary and almost an avowed transaction for niirdsters to receive vast presents, called puts-de-vm, from powers or parties whom they had been able to gratify and serve, we can scarcely judge a man according to the purer delicacy and severer standard of to-day. This much is certain, — that, surrounded with enemies and beset with dangers at every period of his public life, he was never known to counsel a violence or to be guilty of a vengeance ; he punislied his adversaries by bans inots alone ; he M'as in all tilings a moderator and a friend of peace ; and in private life he was gentle, amiable, and singularly beloved by all who were admitted to his intimacy. The character of his intellect was in many respects Italian rather than French ; and to find his parallel we must go back to the statesmen who ruled Florence and Milan during the Middle Ages. His sub- tlety and^?icssc belonged to both countries : his patience, his quietness, his imperturbable SAveetness of temper, were exclusively Italian ; while there was something almost feminine in the seductive attractiveness of his manner. On tlie whole, if M'e consider the moral atmos- phere in which he Mas born and bred, the false position in wliieh early injustice had placed him, the fearful times in which he lived and acted, — times eminently fatal to all high enthusiasm, to all fixed opinions, to all inflexible constancy, — times which tried the courage of the bravest, the convictions of the most obstinate, the faith of the most earnest, — we shall be disposed to judge him with unwonted indulgence, and may perhaps be justified in pronouncing him as worthy of esteem and admiration as any public man can be who lays claim to no lofty senti- ment, no stern principles, and no sj^irit of self-denial or self-sacrifice. Of Benjamin Constant, the friend and ally of jNIadame de Stael for upwards of twenty years, we have left our- MADAME DE STAEL, 49 selves little space to speak ; and in truth his was a type of character with which, thoucjh well worth studying, we can feel little sympathy. He was a second Voltaire, almost as clever as the first, even more selfish and egotis- tical, and with none of his redeeming benevolence and sincerity. By universal consent he was, among men, the most brilliant converser of his age. All his contempo- raries speak of his esprit as something perfectly wonderful and enchanting. In the tribune he was formidable from his wit and pungency. As a writer he was acute, spark- ling, and subtle. His letters are models of grace and finesse, — as heartless and affected as those of Walpole, but incomparably cleverer and more entertaining. But he was spoilt and hlas^ at a very early age, — "used up" before most young men have even begun to taste the en- joyments of life. At the age of three-and-twenty his whole soul was withered and dried up : * he had tried everything, and thrown everything aside ; he had ana- lyzed everything, and found everything hollow and de- ceptive ; he had exhausted the pleasures and interests of the world, and pronounced them all to be " weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable." He had "'travelled from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren." His heart had beconie as arid as the desert sand ; he was a fcrsifleiir to the very core ; profoundly cynical and profoundly sceptical, he loved nothing and believed in nothing ; -|- and a deep and * In one of his letters to Madame de Charriere he thiis describes him- self in 1792 : "Blase sur tout, ennnye de tout, amer, e.Eroiste, avec una sorte de sensihilite qui ne sert qu'a me tonrmenter, mobile au point de passer pour fol, sujet a des acces de melancolie qui interrompent tons mes plans, et me font agir, pendant qu'ils durent, comme si j'avais renonce a tout Comment voulez-vous que je reussisse, que je plaise, que je vive ?" t The work of Constant, " De la Eeligion," which occupied him at intervals for thirty years, is the only one of magnitude he has left be- hind him ; and it is characteristic of the man that the first portion and outline of it was written on the backs of packs of playing-cards. After his strange piece of political inconsistency (joining Buonaparte during " the Hundred Days"), he wrote an exculpation of himself to Louis XVIII., which was favorablj' received, and lie was pardoned. A friend complimented him on the occasion : " Eh bien, votre memoire a reussi ; elle a persuade le Eoi." "Jene m'etonne pas" (replied Constant) ; " elU 7n'a presque persuade moi-mSme ! " 3 D 50 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. paralyzin.iT conviction of the brevity and worthlessness of life liad desolated all feeling and destroyed all energy. He was one of the most hopeless of characters, — an in- tellectual and self-oT)serving libertine. He had drank at every fountain, -whether of refined or illicit pleasure ; and he had analyzed each sensation as he locnt along. No deep affection, no absorbing passion, no earnest or solemn thought, seems ever to have entered his heart ; he was dissolute en philosophe ; and, as the poet says, — " Where sucli fairies once have danced, No grass will ever grow." In 1790 — in the midst of the heart-stirring events ■which were then agitating his own country, and exciting the . attention of the whole civilized world — he writes thus to the fatal friend, Madame de Charriere, whose con- versation and intimacy had so greatly contributed to wither up his young spirit : — *' Plus on y pense, et plus on est at a loss de chercher le cui bono de cette sottise qu'on appelle le monde. Je ne com- prends ni le but, ni I'architecte, ni le peintre, ni les figures de cette lantenie magique dont j'ai I'honneur de faire partie. Le comprendrai-je mieux quand j'aurai disparu de dessus le spTi^re ^troite et obsoiire dans laquelle il plait a je ne sals quel invisible pouvoir de me faire danser, bon gr^, mal gre 1 C'est ce que j'ignore Thomson, I'auteur des Saisons, passait souvent des jours entiers daus son lit, et quand on lui de- mandait pourquoi il ne se levait pas : ^ I see no motive to rise, man^ r^pondait-il. Ni raoi non plus, je ne vois de motifs pour rien dans ce monde, et je n'ai de gout pour rien.'' Six months later he writes again : — " Ce n'est pas comme me trouvant dans des circonstances affligeantes que je me plains de la vie : je suis parvenu a ce point de desabusement que je ne saurais que desirer si tout depeudait de moi, et que je suis convaincu que je ne serais dans aucime situation plus heureux que je ne le suis. Cette conviction et le sentiment profond et constant de la brievete de la vie me fait tomber le livre ou la plume des mains, toutes les fois que j'6tudie. Nous n'avous plus de motifs pour acqu^rir de la gloire, pour conquerir un empire ou pour INIADAME DE STAEL. 51 faire un bon livre, que nous n'en avons pour faire une prome- nade ou une partie de whist." He was in this deplorable state of mind — the disen- chanted man of pleasure, the unbelieving Epicurean, the subtle analyst of himself — when he first (in 1794) met Madame de Stael in Switzerland. The effect she produced upon him was instantaneous and lasting ; and she would have cured him of his cynicism and Voltairisme, if the malady had not been too deep-seated for radical recovery. She made him at once almost earnest and enthusiastic. For the first time we find in his letters a tone of serious- ness and a capacity of admiration. He speaks of her thus to his old friend : — " Je la crois tres active, tres imprudente, trfes parlante, mais bonne, confiante, et se livrant de bonne foi. Une preuve qu'elle n'est pas uniquement une machine pai'lante, c'est le vif interet qu'elle prend a tous ceux qu'elle a connus et qui soufFrent." And a few days afterwards he says : — " Depuis que je la connais mieux, je trouve une grande diffi- cult^ a ne pas me repandre sans cesse en eloges, et a ne pas donner a tous ceux h. qui je parle le spectacle de mon interet et de mon admiration. J'ai rarement vu une reunion pareille de quahtes etonnantes et attrayantes, autant de brillant et de justesse, une bienveillance aussi expansive et aussi ciiltiv^e, autant de generosite, une pohtesse aussi douce et aussi sou- tenue dans le monde, tant de charme, de simplicite, d'abandou dans la societe intime. C'est la seconde femme que j'ai trou- v^e qui m'aurait pu tenir lieu de tout I'uuivers, qui aurait pa etre un monde a elle seule pour moi : vous savez quelle a ete la premiere. Madame de Stael a infiniment plus d'esprit dans la conversation intime que dans le monde ; elle salt parfaite- ment ^couter, ce que ni vous ni moi ne pensions ; elle sent I'esprit des autres avec autant de plaisir que le sien ; elle fiiit valoir ceux qu'elle aime avec une attention ingenieuse et con- stante, qui prouve autant de bonte que d'esprit. Enfin, c'est un etre a part, un etre superieur tel qu'il s'en rencontre peut- etre un par siecle, et tel que ceux qui I'approchent, le connais- sent et sont ses amis, doivent ne pas exiger d'autre bonheur." 62 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. rjcnjamin Constant was faithful through life to his early admiration for this remarkable woman : he lived much with her botli at Paris and at Coppet ; he accom- panied her to Germany ; and was henceforth one of the greatest ornaments of her brilliant circle. Of the life they led at Coppet, the following delicious picture is given by Sainte-Beuve : — " Les conversations philosophiques, litt^raires, toiijours pi- quantes ou elcvees, s'engageaieut vers onze heures du matin, S, la reunion du dejeuner ; on les r(*sumait au diner, dans I'in- tervalle du diner au souper, lequel avait lieu a onze heures du soir, et encore au-dela souvent jusqu' apres minuit. Benjamin Constant et Madame de Stael y tenaient surtout le d6. C'est la que Benjamin Constant, que, plus jeime, nous n'avons guere vu que blase, sortant de sa raillerie trop inveter^e par un en- thousiasme un peu factice, causeur toujours prodigieusement spirituel, mais chez qui I'esprit, a la fin, avait herite de toutes les autres facultes et passions phis puissantes, c'est la qu'il se montrait avec feu et natui'ellcment ce que Madame de Stael le proclamait sans i)vi\ent'ion, le premier esprit dn 7noHd€ : il etait certes le plus graud des hommes distingues. Leurs esprits du moins, a tons les deux, se convenaient toujours ; lis etaient surs de s'entendre par la. Rien, au dire des t^moins, n'etait eblouissant et sup6rieur comme leur conversation engag^e dans ce cercle choisi, eux deux tenant la raquette magique du discours, et se renvoyant, durant des heures, sans manquer jamais, le volant de mille pensees entre-crois6es." Under the influence of IMadame de Stael's enthusiasm, Benjamin Constant entered the career of politics, and soon distinguished himself as liberal in opinions and frondeur by temper. But though always eminent, he was never powerful. Au unrivalled converser, an elo- quent orator, a brilliant and most interesting writer, he yet could never attain a position of real influence or high consideration, and accomplished less than many men of far inferior capacity. VChy was this ? It ^^•as simply that all the display of his consummate intellect was an unreal show ; his heart was dust and ashes ; his character was a shifting sand. He had no strong convictions, no MADAME DE STAfiL. 53 settled principles, no earnest purpose. He was a liberal politician, who neither esteemed nor loved his fellow-men, — a student and professor of religion, who yet held no creed and could attain to no faith, — a man who had skimmed the surface of every emotion, but never pene- trated to the depth or the dignity of a passion. A mock- ing spirit presided over his whole being ; to him there was nothing reverend ; for him there was nothing sacred. He had early profaned the Temple of the Lord, and the mois divinior fled from the desecrated shrine, and left it empty, desolate, and unclean. BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. ""TTX Philosophe sous les Toits," by M. Emile Sou- LJ. vestre, is one of the pleasantest and prettiest little books that has ever fallen into our hands. It is the more interesting and surprising as having issued from the press of Paris ; and, after the vehement, diseased, and bacchanalian pages of Balzac, Eugene Sue, and Victor Hugo, is medicine to our scandalized morality, balm to our wounded sensibility, rest to the wearied fancy, and positive refreshment to the irritated eye. To come to it after such reading is like the " crystalline fount " after the " feculent flood," — like the " pure breezes of morn " after the heated and morbific atmosphere of the hospital or the gaming-house, — like the green fields and fresh vege- tation of the. country and the spring, after the glare and fumes of a gaudy and gas-lighted theatre. We feel that we have escaped from intoxication to sobriety, from the vortex of passion to the peace of nature, from that which is simply noxious or revolting, to that which gives true pleasure and does real good; We rejoice to see that such a book can come out of the heart of France, — that such pictures can still be relished there, — that sucli a life as is here depicted can stiU be led there. For though the tone of the book is pure, and all its sentiments are humane, genial, and gentle, it is as remote as possible from anything mawkish or maudlin. It has nothing of the pastoral tenderness, the overdone Arcadianism, M-liich made the popularity of the romance of Bernardin de St. Pierre nearly as sure a sign of an un- healthy state of the public mind as the licentious novels BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 55 that appeared at the same time, and divided with it the favor of the reading world of France. Nor has it any- closer similarity to the Swiss love-stories, and pictures and praises of savage life, with which Eousseau dazzled and delighted the fancy of the profligate and sophisti- cated dames of Paris, in the heinous days of Louis XV. Its pathos is all nlitural ; its sentiments are all genuine and unforced, — the reflections of a contented and kind- hearted man who philosophizes 'from his garret on the motley world beneath him, and mingles with it in his own humble sphere. It indicates that there is still a por- tion of the heart of France sound and unperverted ; and what is more to our immediate purpose, it gives 'a very interesting glimpse into some of those points of Conti- nental life and character, in which it has a marked supe- riority to our own, — peculiarities which it would be well if we could transplant, and which inchue us to a certain uncomfortable misoivincr that some of our aims and exertions may "be sadly misdirected, and that we may, oftener than we deem, be sailing on a wrong tack. The book is in the form of fragments from the diary of a man of fair education and of very humble fortunes, such as may be found in numbers, not only in Paris, but all over the Continent, who lives solitary and contented in his garret, supporting himself in tolerable comfort on the meagre salary of a subordinate government employe, content with poverty while secure against indigence, watching the world around him with a cheerful and sympa- thizing smile, and enjoying the good things of life rather by contemplation than by actual participation. Unambi- tious and unstriving, too wise to risk that scanty stipend which moderate desires and skilful management have made into a competence for vaster but more precarious gains, he finds that everything conspires to teach him the same lesson, namely, in how small an apartment happi- ness may dwell, and how cheaply that apartment may be furnished. Observation, ever on the alert, preserves hini alike from envy or repining : he sees from liis attic win- dow the luxurious furniture of one opposite neighbor, an 5G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. actress or singer, seized for debt, and lier chamber rudely dismantled ; and the humble but always neat room of another vis-a-vis, a sempstress, secure in its jjlodding and unas])iring poverty. He returns from- a homely supper, — the one festal banquet of the year, — shared with a family yet poorer tlian himself, and remembers that he left the unrefined but joyous circle with the regretful ex- clamation, Deja ! and he meets the opulent lady who oc- cupies the first floor of the house next his own, returning jaded and ennuy^e from those gilded saloons where no joy is, and getting out of her carriage with the yawning ejac- ulation, " Enfin ! " On New-Year's Day, when it is cus- tomary in France, and indeed throughout the Continent, to visit friends and give or receive presents, our yjliiloso- pher, who had no friends, and was too poor to make pres- ents, was sitting somewhat moodily in his garret, for his fire would not light, the day was rainy and the wood was damp, there was no milk left for breakfast, and the pot of sweetmeat was quite empty. There is a knock at the door, and Paulette enters, — a pale, thin, ill-dressed little girl, whose life he had saved in a crowd two years before. " II y a devix ans de cela ; depuis, je n'avais revu la petite qu'a de longs intervalles, et je I'avais presque oubliee ; mais Paulette a la memoire des bons coeurs ; elle vient an renou- vellemeut de I'ann^e m'ofFrir ses souhaits de bonlieur. Ello m'apporte, en outre, un plant de violettes en fleurs ; elle-meme I'a mis en terre et cultiv^ ; c'est un bien qui lui appartient tout entier, car il a 6t6 conquis par ses soins, sa volonte, et sa patience. Ce present inattendu, la rougeur modeste de la petite fille, et son compliment balbutie dissipent, comme un rayon du soleil, I'espece de brouillard qui m'euveloppait le coeur ; mes idees passeut brusquement des teintes plonibees du soir aux teintes les plus roses de I'aurore. Je fais asseoir Paulette, et je I'interroge gaiement. " La petite repoud d'abord par des mouosvllabes, mais bien- tot les rules sout renverses, et c'est moi qui eutrecoupe de courtes interjections ses longues confidences. La pauvre en- fant mene uue vie difficile, Orplieline depuis lougtemps, elle est rest^e, avec son fr^re et sa soeur, a la charge d'une vieille BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 57' grand'm^re qvii les a eleves de misere, comme elle a coutume de le dii'e. Cependant Paulette I'aide maintenant dans la con- fection des cartonnages, sa petite soeur Perrine commence a condre, et Henri est apprenti dans une imprimerie. Tout irait bien, sans les pertes et sans les chomages, sans les habits qui s'usent, sans les appetits qui grandissent, sans I'hiver qui oblige a acheter son soleil ! Paulette se plaint de ce que la chandelle dure trop pen et de ce que le bois coute trop cher. La cheminee de leur niansarde est si grande qu'une falourde y produit I'efFet d'une allumctte ; elle est si pres du toit que le vent y renvoit la pluie, et qu'ou y gele sur I'atre en hiver ; aussi y ont-ils renonc^. Tout se borne d^sormais a un rechaud de terre sur lequel cuit le repas. La grand'mere avait bien parl6 d'un poele marchande chez le revendeur du rez-de-chaus- see ; mais celui-ci en a voulu sept francs, et les temps sont trop difficiles pour' une pareille depense ; la famille s'est en consequence resignee a avoir froid par economic." The philosopher resolves to gratify his feelings by mak- ing this poor family a New-Year's present of their coveted stove. Accordingly he gets an old one of his own repaired and put up in their room while all are absent at their daily work, and takes them besides a basket of wood out of his own winter provision, observing that the sacri- fice will only oblige him to warm himself by walking, or by going to bed earlier than usual. The above extract may serve as a specimen of this little , volume, and may explain wherein lies its charm. There is nothing remarkable in the events it relates, nothing brilliant in the pictures which it draws ; but an air of cheerful and healthy serenity broods over every page, and bespeaks a mind that has penetrated the true secret of life, and harvested its richest wisdom. Probably, how- ever, the real cause of the pleasure which the book is calculated to convey arises from the contrast between its atmosphere of repose, and the feverish and busy world in which we live, and from the somewhat pregnant philo- sophical reflections which its perusal irresistibly suggests. It depicts the best and pleasantest features of Continental life, and makes us pause awhile in our breathless and unceasing race, to consider whether we might not, with 3* 58 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. advantage both to soul and body, take a leaf out of our neighbor's book. The extremes of character in civilized man are to be found in the Asiatic and the American, — the silent, dig- nified, placid, and stagnant Mussulman, and the striv- ing, pushing, restless, progressive Yankee. Between these extremes lie the easy and joyous Celt, generally content- ed with the passing hour, l)ut often contented witli too little ; the stationary and phlegmatic German of the South, cautious and unaspiring, frugal and complacent ; the Nor- wegian, whose life in most things resembles that of his Teutonic brethren ; the Swiss, who approximate nearer to ourselves ; and finally tlie British, only a few degrees less ambitious, insatiable, unresting, and discontented than their western offspring. In the appendix to the second part of Layard's " Nineveh," there is a letter from a Turk- ish Cadi, so thoroughly Oriental in its spirit, so exactly portraying those peculiar features of character in which the East differs from the West, and so amusingly astound- ing to men accustomed to look upon exertion, the acqui- sition of knowledge, and the progress of wealth as the great ends of existence, that we cannot do better than quote it. The traveller had astonished the weak mind of liis Mussulman friend, by applying to him for some statistical information regarding the city and province in which he had dwelt so long as a man in authority. The Turk replies with this dignified and affectionate rebuke : — " My illustrious friend, and joy of my liver ! " The thing you ask of me is both difficult and useless. Although I have passed all my days in this place, I have neither counted the houses nor have I inquired into the number of the inhabitants ; and as to what one person loads on his mules, and another stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no business of mine. But above all, as to the previous histoiy of this city, God only knows the amount of dirt and confusion that the infidels may have eaten before the coming of the sword of Islam. It were improfitable for us to inquire into it. " my sold ! my lamb ! seek not after the things BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 59 which concern thee not. Thou earnest unto us, and we wel- comed thee : go in peace. " Of a truth, thou hast spoken many words ; and there is no harm done, for the speaker is one and the Hstener is another. After the fashion of thy people, thou hast wandered from one place to another, until thou art happy and content in none. We (praise be to God) were born here, and never desii'e to quit it. Is it possible, then, that the idea of a general intercourse between mankind should make any impression on our under- standing 1 God forbid ! " Listen, my son ! There is no wisdom equal unto the belief in God. He created the world ; and shall we liken our- selves to him in seeking to penetrate the mysteries of his creation ] Shall we say, Behold this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail cometh and goeth in so many years '? Let it go ! He from whose hand it came will direct and guide it. " But thou wilt say unto me, Stand aside, man, for I am more learned than thou art, and have seen more things. If thou thinkest that thou art in this respect better than I am, thou art welcome. I pi'aise God that I seek not that which I require not. Thou art learned in the things I care not for ; and as for that which thou hast seen, I defile it. Will much knowledge create thee a double stomach, or wilt thou seek Pai'adise with thine eyes 1 " my friend ! If thou wilt be happy, say. There is no God but God ! Do no evil, and thus wilt thou fear neither man nor death ; for surely thine hour will come ! '- The meek in spirit (El Fakir) "Imaum Ali Tade." We think our readers will agree with us that there is something very touching in this singular effusion, with its strange mixture of complacent ignorance and pious trust, its content bordering on apathy, and its lofty com- passion for the laborious follies of the struggling and toil- ing Frank. Of course we are not writing to recommend such a state of mind. "VYe merely wish to observe that it contains the germ and element of a wisdom to which our busy bustling existence is a stranger. As a pendant to this epistle we may give an anecdote that we once GO LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. heard of that class of Celts who in insouciant content most nearly resemble the Asiatics. A cosmopolite trav- eller, journeying in Lower Canada, was one day greatly struck by the contrast in the appearance of two adjoining ])r()perties, both having a river frontage, both enjoying a fertile soil, and apparently exactly alike in all natuial advantages. The tirst was admirably farmed, and neatly kept ; the house homely but substantial, and in good re- l)uir ; the fences strong, uniform, and in faultless order. This belonged to an Englishman. The adjacent larm was in a very different condition ; the flocks and herds were ani})le ; the crops not bad, and the dwelling large and ample ; there was no appearance of poverty, but every sign of indolence and carelessness, — the buildings dilap- idated, the roofs defective, the fences, not indeed ineffi- cient, but patched, as you seldom see except in Ireland, with odds and ends of trees, old gates, etc ; here a gap stopped by a plough ; there a break made good by a cart tilted up in the opening. Our narrator visited the owner, a French colonist, and received of course a most hospitable welcome. His'host was cheerful and complacent. After some conversation the visitor remarked that the roof was broken through in one or two places, and let in the rain. " C'est egal " (said the proprietor), "I have only to move my bed to another part. I can always find a dry corner to lie in." "But," observed the traveller, "I notice that your fences are in the same state, full of holes and make- shifts." " Qu'est-ce que cela fait ? " (asked the host) " they do well enough to keep my cattle in and other people's out ! " " Possibly " (replied the traveller), " but look at your neighbor, in what beautiful condition his hedges and- divisions are kept." This was too much for the French- man : his native piiilosophy broke out at once. " Ah oui ! Jc miserable ! " he exclaimed in a tone of indescribable contempt ; " that man toils from morning till night ; is up before daylight, and working after dark ; never goes to merry-makings : I would not be like him for Morlds. I lia\e enough : what need I more ? Can a man cat iciih two spoons I " BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 61 But apart from these extreme cases of content where content ought not to ,be, it is impossible to become ac- quainted with those instances of rational and well-founded satisfaction with a most moderate and limited present, of whicli Continental life offers us so many examples, with- out feeling, or at least suspecting, that, as compared with our hurried, and turmoiliug existence, our neighbors have chosen the better part. Look at Norway, for example, which has attained, as nearly as possible, to that " sta- tionary state " which most economists regard with dread, aversion, and a feeling akin to shame. There the in- habitants may be said to form one vast middle class ; there is no great wealth, no absolute destitution ; peasants and proprietors live on together, generation after genera- tion, on the same land, and much in the same style as their forefathers ; fuel and food, though simple, are both abundant ; the men till the soil and fell the timber ; the women manufacture at home the clothing they need ; each man's life, whether he be farmer, laborer, or artisan, is pretty much cut out for him by circumstances and custom; as he grows up, he steps into the vacant niche in the community which was waiting for him (or if not vacant, he waits for it), without any thought of exchanging it for a difterent one, or struggling out of it into one higher ; there is much comfort, but little luxury ; much cheerfulness, perhaps too much conviviality; there is gen- eral equality and general content. It is easy to live there, — not easy, scarcely possible, to grow rich ; the country is peopled pretty nearly up to its resources, so that popu- lation can increase but slowly ; as young men and maidens arrive at maturity, they fall in love, and are betrothed as elsewhere, but they do not marry till a " houseman " dies, or till, in some way or other, room is made for them ; their sole desire and aim is, to enjoy their natural sliare of the goods of life, but not to increase that share beyond the usual rate ; they are satisfied to equal, and do not aspire to surpass their father's lot. Thus their existence glides on from the cradle to the grave, broken by no tumultuous crises, embittered by uo pressing anxieties, 62 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. shortened b}'' no fierce competition, goaded by no Mild ambition, darkened by no dismal failures ; but happy in a continuous activity, moderate in its aim, and sure of its reward. Tliey are stationary, but not stagnant. In Auvergne, \ve find a state of society almost pre- cisely similar. There the ]ieasants are nearly all pro- prietors, and often rich, for they spend little and cultivate well. The hoardings, Avhen spent at all, are spent in land ; everything is made at home ; sometimes literally nothing is bought except the drugs to dye their wool ; they live simply but plentifully ; and generation succeeds generation in the same industrious and monotonous con- tent. Wars and revolutions pass over tlieir country ; but they scarcely hear of them, and rarely feel them. In Switzerland, too, especially in the cantons of Berne and Zurich, we find much of the same primitive, unvarying, and enjoyable existence, though liere the curse of " in- debtedness," which seems inseparable from the law of equal succession, often sheds a perpetual gloom over the life of the peasant proprietor. But when he has escaped this evil, and has found the small estate which sufficed to his ancestors suffice for him also, and when his younger brothers have gone to foreign countries, to seek or make their fortunes, — the Swiss farmer has always appeared to us to enjoy one of the happiest of human lots. Edu- cated, industrious, pious, and patriotic, the citizen of a free state small enough for him to feel an appreciable unit among its inhabitants, — in a situation which nour- ishes no ambition that he may not readily gmtify, and yet exempts him from those gloomy cares and foi'ebod- ings as to the future, which wear away the lives and sadden the domestic circle of thousands among the Ameri- cans and English, — there is much in his existence which we may well envy, and not a little which, perhaps, we might emulate. In Germany, especially in Central and Southern Ger- many, we find a numerous class of middle life, — to which we have no analogon in England, — who possess an assured but a moderate competence at which they are BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 63 certain to arrive in time. They have not, as in England, when they have chosen their profession, and undergone . their education, to phmge into the hot strife and race of competition, and take their chance of obtaining a main- tenance or a prize by overcoming and distancing their rivals. If they have passed through the ordained cur- riculum and performed the required tasks, their future is provided for, and they have only to wait for its realiza- tion, which comes indeed a few years sooner or later, but about the advent of which they need to give themselves no anxiety. As functionary, or surgeon, or lawyer, or master tradesman, their turn will come as . soon as the niche they were destined to fill becomes vacant ; for the government, by its complicated and vigilant arrangements, has taken care that no profession shall be overstocked, that there shall be no more aspirants than there are posts for them to fill. We "are not now expressing any opin- ion as to the advisability of such a system of leading- strings ; we only call attention to one of its effects, — which is the exemption of a large proportion of the mid- dle and educated classes from harassing anxieties about their future or that of their children, and the consequent diffusion of a sort of quiet happiness and somewhat apa- thetic content of which here we have no conception. These men of scanty but of certain expectations enjoy the present in a respectable and often most worthy man- ner ; they are educated, and have a moderate amount of intellectual and more of aesthetic taste ; they love social pleasures, and have ample leisure for them ; unless sin- gularly gifted, they know they must remain in the hum- ble sphere in which their route is traced ; they have no grandeur to hope for, and no destitution to fear ; Us ont de qitoi vivre, as the expression is, and in order to be thoroughly happy need only to cut down their desires to the level of their means. Their life is a quietl}^ flowing- stream, somewhat languid, perhaps, with many bright flowers growing on its banks, which they have leisure both to admire and to cull ; they do perhaps little for their generation, but they lead a not undignilied, and as- 64 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. suredly not an unenjoyed or morose, existence ; they may cultivate all the amenities, and affections, and many even of the elegances of the domestic circle, and if their minds are well trained and furnished, they may add to these the pleasures of calm and contemplative literary habits. Yet their income is of an amount whicli (after making full allowance for the different cost of living in the two countries) with us would be considered as utterly inadequate to afford means for a liappy or comfortalile life, and to be content with which would be held to argue deplorable want of energy and enterprise. In France, too, — though long years of change and con- vulsion have diffused a longing discontent and restless- ness througli the urban population, which too often is fever only and not energy, — there still remain many in mod- erate and humble circumstances, professional men, clerks, and subordinate cmjjioj/es, who, on a pittance which would be considered as grinding poverty in England, contrive not only to support life, but to embellish it and enjoy it. They make the best of what they have, instead of anx- iously striving to increase it. They " cut their coat ac- cording to their cloth." They are not tormented by the desire to imitate or to equal those to whom fortune has been more bountiful. They are contented to cnjoi/, while their analogues in England would be fretfully la];toring to acquire. They are not, as we are, forever haunted by something in the distance to be obtained or to be escaped. They do not, like us, immolate the possessed present on the shrine of an uncertain future. They do not pull down their house to build their monument. They per- form cheerfully and faithfully their humble and, perhaps, uninteresting functions, and devote the rest of their time to simple, social, unambitious enjoyments. There are others again who, finding themselves at their entrance into life in possession of a moderate competence, — a small patrimonial inheritance, — deliberately pause to de- cide on their career. On the one side lie the possibilities of wealth, the gauds of distinction, the gratification of commercial or political success, to be purchased by har- BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 65 assing and irritating strife, by carking cares, by severe and unremitting toil. On the other, lie the charms of a life of unaspiring ease, of quiet nights and unanxious days, of the free enjoyment of the present hour, — some- thing of a butterfly existence, in short. Nine Yankees out of ten would choose the former; nine Frenchmen out of ten will prefer the latter. We do not here intend to pronounce which is right ; but it is hard to persuade ourselves that all the wisdom — all the true estimate of the objects and the worth of life — lies with the man who decides for the thornier and rougher path. Now let us cast a glance at the contrasted tone of English and American social existence : we may class them together, for the main difference is, that in Amer- ica our state of struggle is even more universal, and car- ried on under more favorable prospects of success. And we have still a few who cling to the " even tenor " of ex- istence as the preferable state : in our exaggerated and caricaturing descendants, scarcely any such are to be found. Now, we are no advocates for a life of inaction and repose. Activity is better than stagnation ; exertion in pursuit of any object is better than an existence with no object at all. "We know well that out of dissatisfac- tion with our present condition have arisen all our suc- cessful conquests of higher and more desirable condi- tions ; that to the restless energy and aspiring temper of the Anglo-Saxon may be traced a large proportion of the material progress, and not a little of the intellectual pro- gress, of the world ; that civilization, if it does not consist in perpetual advance, at least owes its origin and present perfection to perpetual endeavor. But we cannot permit ourselves to regard the struggle to be rich as worthy of admiration for itself. We cannot bring ourselves to re- gard the gallant and persevering energy which is devoted to " getting on in life," as consecrated to a high aim. We cannot persuade ourselves at once, and without inquiry, as many do, to pronounce the life that enjoys, as ipso facto, and per se, meaner than the life that toils. We 66 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. mourn over energies wasted by misdirection, as well as over energies suliercd to lie dormant and die out. The man who strives for a clear duty or a noble prize is be- yond question a higher and worthier being than the man who glides througli life in happy and innocent tranquil- lity ; but we are by no means so sure that the man who, having a ccym-pdcncc, spends years, and strength, and spirits, and temper, in striving for a fortune, has made a wiser or a better choice than the man who, having a com- petence, sits down thankfully and contentedly to enjoy it with his family and friends. To he able to make " the future and the distant predominate over the present," is unquestionably to have risen in the scale of thinking beings ; but it by no means follows that whatever is distant and future ought to predominate over what is present and at hand. We agree altogether in the tone of the following remarks from the pen of our first and most genial political economist : — " I cannot regard a stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion manifested towards it by politi- cal economists of the old school. I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improve- ment on our present condition. I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on ; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial pro- gress. The Northern and Middle States of America are a specimen of this stage of civilization in very favorable cir- cumstances ; having apparently got rid of all social injustices and inequalities that affect persons of Caucasian race and of the male sex, while the proportion of population to capital and land is such as to insure abundance to exerj able-bodied member of the community who does not forfeit it by miscon- duct. They have the six points of chartism, and they have no poverty ; and all that these advantages seem as yet to have done for them (notwithstanding some incipient signs of a better tendency) is, that the life of the whole of one sex BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 67 is devoted to dollar-hunting, and of the other to breeding dollar-hunters. This is not a kind of social perfection which philanthropists to come will feel any very eager desire to as- sist in realizing. Most fitting indeed is it, that while riches are power, and to grow as rich as possible the universal object of ambition, the path to its attainment should be open to all, without favor or partiality. But the best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward. " That the energies of mankind should be kept in employ- ment by the struggle for riches, as they were formerly by the struggle of war, until the better minds succeed in educating the others to better things, is undoubtedly more desirable than that they should rust and stagnate. While minds are coarse, they require coarse stimuli ; and let them have them. In the mean time, those who do not accept the present very early stage of human improvement as its ultimate type, may be excused for being comparatively indifferent to the mere increase of production and accumulation. I know not why it should be a matter of congratulatioh, that persons who are already richer than any one need to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleas- ure, except as representatives of wealth ; or that numbers of individuals should pass over every year from the middle class into a richer class, or from the class of the occupied rich into that of the unoccupied." * It is indeed a sad spectacle, that of so vast a propor- tion of the national energy still devoted to mere material acquisition, still laboring in a field in which such ample harvests have been already gained, still pushing on in a direction where there is little left to win, — while so many social problems remain still unsolved, so many grievous wounds still unhealed, so many noble paths still unfrequented or unexplored. We still press madly for- ward in the race, though the goal can present us with no new attractions ; we still struggle " to get on," though we have got far enough to command all the substantial acquisitions and enjoyments of a worthy life ; we still persist in striving and toiling for added wealth, which * MUl's Pol. Econ., II. 318 (3d ed.). 68 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. can purchase for us no added happiness ; and in the hot competition we push aside or trample down many who really need what we only desire. New roads, vaster ships, more rapid and cheaper locomotion, spdedier transmis- sion of intelligence, greater physical comforts, — all these are valuable things, and objects of legitimate exertion. But of these we have now almost enough ; we have pushed on long enough and far enough in this exclusive line ; there are other fields to be tilled, other harvests to be reaped, other aims to be achieved. Thousands and thousands of course must, till some blessed change comes over our social state, spend life in striving for a living, and thousands more must concentrate all their exertions on the acquirement of a competence ; but why should this comj)etence be made, by our increasing lux- uriousness, an ever- vanishing point ? And why should those on whom no such hard necessity is laid, imitate their needier brethren ? "Why should not those who have a fortune sufficient to supply all reasonable wants, and to guarantee them against anxious cares, pause awhile upon the dusty and weary thoroughfare, and try to form a juster estimate of the purpose of life, and the relative value of its aims and prizes ? Why should we so cling to the undoubted but fragmentary truth that enjoyment lies only in the race, in the contest, in the effort ? The successful barrister at the summit of his profession and the height of fame is so overwhelmed with business that he has time neither for sleep, nor society, nor recreation, nor literature ; his strength is overtasked, his life is slip- ping away, he has not even leisure for the sweet ameni- ties of the domestic circle ; he is amassing thousands which he does not want and cannot spend ; he is en- grossing briefs which poorer men thirst for in vain ; yet when does he ever resign a portion of his business to hungiy competitors ? when does he ever resolve \ipon " shorter hours," ■ — less toil combined with less emolu- ment ? When does he ever say to himself, " I will no longer spend my labor for that which is not bread, and for the food which satisfieth notj I will pause, I will BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 69 rest, I will enjoy, I will contemplate, I will consecrate my remaining years to my family, to my country, to my soul " ? The physician, in the same way, who has worked his way up to the first practice and reputation, and is earning wealth far beyond his needs, and has no rest night nor day, — who can never take up a book, and sel- dom finish a dinner, and scarcely ever go into society, and only at rare intervals run for a hasty holiday into the country, — how rarely does he retire and leave the field to rising rivals, till his infirmities compel him ! In these and similar cases, indeed, it often happens that it is not the desire of acquisition, nor yet the love of their profession, which retains these men in their unresting harness, but the conviction that they could enjoy no other life ; they remain " slaves of the oar " because they could not be happy in their freedom. They have lived so long and so exclusively in their work, that they have lost all relish for the simpler and quieter enjoyments of exist- ence ; literature and science have no longer any charms for them ; political and public objects, ignored or forgot- ten for long years, cannot now excite their interest, and their sympathies with social life have become extinct or feeble. What greater condemnation can be passed upon the narrow groove in which their life has run, — upon the partial and fragmentary cultivation of their being which has brought them to this pass, — upon the social system which so favors this one-sided, machine-like, in- complete, undignified existence ! It is true that as mat- ters are now arranged in England, and in the state of fierce competition in which we live, and move, and have our being, this devotion of the whole man to his work seems indispensable to success, — it is one of our most grievous social evils that it should be so ; but it is owing very much to the very instinctive and pertinacious strife " to get on " which we complain of, — a strife not indeed objectless, but continued long after the original object has been obtained. For if our mode of life were simpler, if our standard of the needed or the fitting were more rational and less luxurious, if our notion of a " compe- 70 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDCxMENTS. tence " were more real and less conventional, and if we were more disposed to stay our hand when that compe- tence was gained, — this competition would become far less severe and oppressive ; men might possibly have to work nearly as hard in their several callings, Ijut tliey would worh for fewer years, and the earlier retirement of the successful would make more frequent openings for the needy and the striving ; the barrister and physician would be satisfied with making their £5,000 or £10,000 a year for fifteen years instead of for twenty-five ; and they would h ve the double gain of creating a vacancy for others, and of retiring themselves before life had be- come wholly dry, dull, disenchanted, and unenjoyable. The thing wanted is the general adoption of a juster and worthier estimate of the true meaning, pleasures, and purposes of life, — a perception that existence was given us for noble aims, not for solid acquisitions, — that when a sufficiency is once attained, the pursuit of wealth brings many cares, sacrifices, and privations, and its acquisition can purchase only fresh luxuries which bring no fresh enjoyment. If this idea could but gain entrance into the upper circles of society; if the rich and great, — those whose well-established and recognized position gives them absolute freedom, if they choose to take it, — instead of living in a style of inordinate luxury which others are always endeavoring to ape or emulate, were to set an example of simplicity and moderation, to exchange gor- geousness for taste, to prefer the arts which adorn life for those which merely minister to its voluptuous smoothness, to desert a career of hollow splendor and joyless show for one of true and beneficent social influence ; if those who can and do give the tone and decide the direction of the national mind would, out of true wisdom and real prefer- ence, tacitly impose upon themselves some " sumptuary laws," and adopt a style of living which should make display ■soilgar, and opulence therefore comparatively useless, — it is not easy to conjecture how rapidly the contagion of the sound example would spread downwards, how vast a proportion of the supposed necessities of gen- BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 71 teel life would be instantaneously swept away, and how sudden a chill would come over the present universal and feverish passion for unnecessary wealth. Sound political economy would frown upon no such triumph of rationality ; those who resolve to live sensibly need not fear that they will thereby infringe any scientific princi- ples or natural laws. We preach no restriction of civil- ized man to the simple requirements of the savage ; we wage no war against acquired tastes or artificial wants ; we do not seek to discourage those who can, from indul- ging in the elegances or cultivating the refinements which soften and embellish life ; we only desire to limit luxurious expenditure to that which confers real and not unworthy enjoyment, and to terminate the pursuit of wealth when all the means of true happiness which wealth can purchase are already in our reach. We would at least have every man be content with the full goblet, without seeking to dissolve within it the needless and untasted pearl. We wish to see the middle and upper life of England less a scene of bustle, of effort, and of struggle, and more one of placid content and intellectual serenity ; less of a mad gallop, and more of a quiet prog- ress; less of a dusty race-course, and more of a cultivated garden ; less of a career which disgusts us in our hours of weariness and sickens us in our moments of reflection, and more of one which we can enjoy while we tread it, and look back upon without shame and regret when it is closed. Need we fear that the world«would stagnate under such a change ? Need we guard ourselves against the miscon- struction of being held to recommend a life of complacent and inglorious inaction ? We think not. We would only substitute a nobler for a meaner strife, — a rational for an excessive toil, — an enjoyment that springs from serenity, for one that springs from excitement only ; we would enable our countrymen to find happiness in con- templation as well as in action. To each time its own preacher, to each excess its own counteraction. In an age of dissipation^, liinguor, and stagnation, we should join 72 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. with Mr. Carlyle in preaching the " Evangel of Work," and say with him, " Blessed is the man who has found his work ; let him ask no other blessedness." * In an age of strenuous, fren;^ied, feverish, excessive, and often utterly irrational and objectless exertion, we join ]\Ir. INIill in preaching the milder and more needed " Evangel of Leisure." " The worth of work does not surely consist in its leading to other work, and so on to work upon work without end. On the contrary, the multiplication of work, for purposes not worth caring about, is one of the evils of our present condition. When justice and reason shall be the rule of human affairs, one of the first things to which we may expect them to be applied is the question, How many of the so-called luxuries, conven- iences, refinements, and ornaments of life are ivorth the labor which must be undergone as the condition of producing them % The beautifying of existence is as worthy and useful an object as the sustaining of it, but only a vitiated taste can see any such result in those fopperies of so-called civilization, which myriads of hands are now occupied and lives wasted in provid- ing. In opposition to the ' Gospel of Work,' I would assert the Gospel of Leisure, and maintain that human beings cannot rise to the finer attributes of their nature compatibly with a life filled with labor To reduce ver}^ greatly the quan- tity of work required to caiTy on existence, is as needful as to distribute it more equalh' ; and the progress of science, and the increasing ascendency of justice and good sense, tend to this result." f The second point in which it appears to us that Conti- nental life has greatly the advantage over our own, is in the aspect which poverty assumes. Earely in France or in Germany does it sink so low as with us. Far more seldom does it reach the form of destitution. Scarcely * " Who art thou that complainest of thj' life of toil ? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother ; see thy fellow-workmen there in God's eternitj', surviving there, they alone surviving, sacred band of the im- mortals, celestial body-guard of the Empire of mankind. Ever in the weak human memory, they survive so long as saints, as heroes, as gods, they alone surviving ; peojjling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes of time." — Past and Present. t Eraser's Magazine. •BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 73 ever does it descend to such squalor as in our great cities. Many causes combine to produce this enviable difference ; sometimes it is purchased at a price which we are not prepared to pay ; but of the fact of the difference there can, we believe, be no question. We all know how inces- santly of late years our sympathies have been aroused, and our feelings shocked and pained, by pictures of the awful depths to which misery descends in the courts and alleys of our great metropolis, as well as of 'Edinburgh and Glasgow ; of human beings living by hundreds in dens filthier than sties, and more pestilential than plague liospitals ; of men, women, and children huddled together in dirt, disorder, and promiscuity like that of the lower animals ; of girls delicately bred, toiling day and night for wages utterly inadequate to tlie barest maintenance ; of deaths from long insufficiency of food ; of deaths from absolute starvation. We are not prepared to indorse the heart-rending and sickening delineations of Mayhew, Kingsley, and Dickens,* in all their details, but neither are we able to withhold our assent to their rou^h and general fidelity. They are too far confirmed by the cold official statements of blue books for that. Poverty, tlien, in Great Britain assumes many and frequent forms of ag- gravated wretchedness and squalor, which change its character from a condition of privation to one of positive infliction, which make life a burden, a malady, and a curse. In France and Germany, we believe we are war- ranted in stating, these abysses of misery are scarcely found, — or only as anomalous and most astounding ex- ceptions. We never hear of them in Vienna. We be- lieve they could not exist there. There is nothing like them in Munich, Dresden, or Berlin. Sir Francis Head and Lord Ashley put themselves in the liands of an ex- perienced resident in Paris, with a request that they might be taken to the very worst haunts and dwellings of the lowest portion of the population, and this is the testimony Sir F. Head gives : — * liOndoii Poor, Alton Locke, and Bleak House, Tom-all-alone's. 4 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. " I must own it was my impression, find T believe it was that of Lord Ashley, that the poverty we had come to witness bore no eoniparison whatever to that reckle.ssness of personal appearance, that abject wretchedness, that squalid misery, whicli — dressed in the cast-oft' tattered garments of our wealthy classes, and in clothes perforated with holes not to be seen amiong the most savage tribes — Ireland annually l)ours out upon England, and which, in the crowded courts and allej's of London I have so often visited, produce among our own people, as it were, by infection which no moral rem- edy has yet been able to cure, scenes not only revolting as well as discreditable to human nature, but which are to be witnessed in no other portion, civilized or uncivilized, of the globe In another locality. La Petite Pologne, we found the general condition of the poorer classes in no way Avorse than those we had just left. On entering a large house, four stories high, running round a small square hollow cojirt, we ascertained that it contained rather more than five hundred lodgers, usually gi'ouped together in families or little commu- nities. In this barrack or warren, the rooms, paved with bricks, were about fifteen feet long, ten feet broad, and eight feet high. We found them, generally speaking, clean and W'ell ventilated, but the charge for each chamber unfurnished was six francs a month In the most miserable district in the west end of Paris, we also failed to meet with auA'thing that could be said to add opprobrium to poverty. The inhab- itants of the few houses we entered were, no doubt, existing upon but very scanty subsistence, but in every case they ap- peared anxious to preserve polite manners and to be clean in their dress. In the Rue de la Eoche, No. 2, we entered a lodging-house, kept by a clean, pleasing-mannered woman, and as all her lodgers were out at work, we walked over her establishment. The rooms, which were about eight feet seven inches in height, contained, nearly touching each other, from thi'ee to five double beds ; for each of which she charged ten sous a night, or 2id. for each sleeper (in London the charge is usually 4d.). Each room had one window, and we found every one wide open." — Head's Fagots of French Sticks, I. 114-118. Now, when we remember that England is beyond com- parison richer than these Continental states, and that the BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 75 earnings of our laboring classes are far higher than those of the same classes in either France or Germany, — higher even in reference to the price of the necessaries of life ; and that we are accustomed to regard ourselves as stand- ing at the head of European civilization, and as having pursued a more enlightened social policy than other na- tions ; there is much in the contrast we have noticed that sliould startle us into inquiry and reflection. What are the causes of a phenomenon so painful and discreditable to us ? As a general rule the lal)oring poor abroad are more respectable in their character and mode of life than their analoga in England, — not certainly cleverer, not better workmen, not made of more sterling stuff, than most of the same class with us, but still leading generally a more decent, worthy, satisfactory, social existence ; their peasants are more contented, better-mannered, less boorish, and (when unexcited) less brutal, and more comfortable, though often with fewer of the raw materials of comfort ; their artisans are steadier, soberer, more cheerful, more saving, and more sensible than ours ; and even their very poor, destitute, and forlorn are less wretched, less squalid, less absolutely abandoned and despairing than ours.* Why is this ? And when we thus come to compare the results of our opposite notions and proceedings in matters * Even classes like the " distressed needlewomen " seem far less mis- erable in Paris than in London. Compare the following -from Un • Pliilosophe sous les Toits, with the harrowing pictures given us in Margaret, Alton Locke, and Realities : — "Jeme suis trouve dans un wagon pres de deux scenrs deja snr le retour, ai)partenant a la classe des Parisiens casaniers et ])aisibles dont j'ai parle plus haut. Quelipies complaisances dc hon voisinage ont suffi pour m'altirer leur contiance ; au bout de quelques minutes je savais toute leur histoire. " Ce sont dau.x; pauvres filles restees orphelines a quinze ans, et qui, depuis, ont vecu comuie vivent les femnies qui travaillent, d'economie et de privation. Fabriquant depuis vingt ou trente ans des agraffes pour la menu maison, elles ont vu dix maitres s'y succeder et s'enricher, sans que rien ait change dans leur sort. Elles habitent toujours la meme chambre, au fond d'une de ces impasses de la rue St. Denis ou I'air et le soleil sont inconnus. Elles se mettent au travail avant le jour, le pro- longent apres la nuit, et voient les annees se joindre aux annees sans que leur vie ait ete marquee par aucim autre eveuemeut que rofhce du di- manche, une promenade, ou une maladie." 76 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. of social policy, is there not reason to suspect that, even if the ultimate and average verdict be given in our favor, we may not be so wholly riglit nor our neiglibors so u-holly ■wrong as it has hitherto pleased us to imagine ? There must surely be something good and imital)le in a system nndcr which, while ^wirr^^ is more general, misery is less frequent and less extreme than in our free, prosperous, and energetic land. One of the causes which contribute to this superiority, in Germany at least, we have already incidentally no- ticed, and we shall pass it over the more briefly as it is of a nature which we could not imitate or approach. We allude to the care taken by the govennnents of Cen- tral Europe that there should be a calling, an opening, a mode of livelihood for every one of their citizens as he reaches manhood, — a place at life's banquet, in short, to use Malthus's illustration. They take vigilant cognizance of each man's means of support, and do not allow him to marry till these means are reasonably adequate. In Norway, no one can marry without "showing, to the sat- isfaction of the clergyman, that he is permanently settled in such a manner as to offer a fair prospect that he can support a family." In Mecklenburg, marriages are de- layed by the conscription in the twenty-second year, and by military service for six years ; besides which the par- ties must have a dwelling, without which the clerygman is not allowed to marry them. In Saxony, " a man may not marry before lie is twenty-one, if liable to serve in the army. In Dresden, artisans may not marry tOl they become masters in their trade." In Wurtemberg and Bavaria (besides being obliged to remain single till the termination of the period fixed for military service), " no man may marry without permission, and that permis- sion is only granted on proving that he and his wife have between them sufficient to establish themselves and maintain a family : say from 800 to 1000 florins in large towns ; 400 to 500 in smaller ones ; and in villages 200 florins, or about £10." In Lubeck, Frankfort, and many cantons of Switzerland, similar regulations are in BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 77 force.* It is difficult to say that there is anything in them which is inconsistent with justice or a fitting amount of social freedom, since the universal and tacit custom in mod- ern civilized states, of comyjelling the community to main- tain those who cannot maintain themselves, certainly im- plies and involves a correlative right on the part of the community to watch that the number of these public bur- dens shall not be selfishly or wantonly augmented ; and after all, these regulations only impose by law upon the poor the restrictions which the middle and upper ranks by habit, and voluntarily, impose upon themselves. But these restrictions are too foreign to our national notions to be ado]ited here as externally imposed fetters : all that can be hoped for is that in time our laboring classes may become enlightened enough to assume them of their own frfee will, as they become conscious of tlie beneficial effect they could not fail to produce on their condition, and cognizant of the general though moderate and monoto- nous well-being which they are instrumental in diffus- ing among the inhabitants of Central Europe. A second cause, and perhaps the most freqyent and the most powerful of all, in producing the contrast we have noticed in the aspect of French and English poverty, is the more habitual sobriety of the laboring class on the other side of the Channel. The vice of intemperance, or, where it does not reach that point, the custom of in- dulgence in spirituous liquors, so unhappily prevalent in our country, may not only do much to account for what- ever is peculiarly afflicting and disreputable in the con- dition of our poor, but is the one main reason why, in spite of our general prosperity, this class has not risen to a height of comfort, ease, and opulence unparalleled in the old world. As is well known, our working classes yearly waste in the purely mischievous enjoyment's of the pal- ate a sum nearly equal to the whole Imperial revenue,i- * See Sonior on Foreign Poor Laws. Answers obtained from our con- suls abroad. + Mr. Porter has shown that this amount cannot be less than £54,- 000,000 jicr annum. 78 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. — a sum which, if suffered to accumulate, ■would soon reuder them ca])italists ; if invested in annuities or sav- ings-hanlcs, would secure them aj^ainst the day of I'everse or incapacity; if judiciously expended, would raise them at once to a condition of comfort, respectability, even of luxury, and, if they desired it, of comparative leisure. A cessation of this expenditure would he equivalent to raising the earnings of every poor man's family througli- out Great Britain, by £ 10 a year, or four sliillings a week. But this would be tlie smallest portion of the saving. The whole habits and mode of life of the individual would be regenerated. The home would become happy ; the wliole domestic circle would be a scene of peace in- stead of strife. Tliere would be few filthy dwellings, few neglected children, few of tliose scandalous cases of M'ives half murdered by their drunken husbands, which now disgrace every police court in our cities. It is impossible to over-color or exaggerate the change which that one circumstance would make. All who have had to do with tlie poor know how directly, how inevitably, how rapidly, a habit of drinking, yielded to Ity the head of the family, changes poverty into destitution, stinted means into squalid wretchedness, a home into a den. The French artisan comparatively seldom gives way to this dreadful vice, and seldom, therefore, incurs the sordid misery wdiicli is its invariable consequence. He is often, gener- ally, much poorer than Ids English brother; his fare is scantier ; his house is smaller ; his bed is harder ; but he rarely aggravates these privations gratuitously by gross indulgence ; seldoraer still does he cast these privations on his wife and children, while living in wasteful intem- perance himself. But connected with this greater sobriety, and operating in the same d-irection, is anotlier cause of the superiorit}'' of the French poor man. He is by no means always better educated, but he has nearly always, whether from nature or training, a degree of taste and imagination of M'hich our poor are sadly destitute. These qualities give him, in however straitened circumstances he may be, a BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 79 fondness for the embellishments and amenities of life, which makes him strive against squalor to the very last. He refuses to accept an utterly unornamented and inele- gant existence, and because he is pinched, overworked, and even almost destitute, he does not see why he should also become thoroughly hopeless, spiritless, and degraded. Much of tliis oesthetic superiority is owing, no doubt, to original difference of constitution ; much of it may, we believe, be traced to peculiarities of education. The French peasant is probably in general as ignorant as our own ; but in what education he does receive there is mingled less that is merely rudimentary and mechanical, and more that is imaginative and refining. This is still more the case with the German and the Swiss. They have less of the alphabet instilled into them, but more of music, poetry, and the sentiments of poetry. Alto- gether, the temperament of the laboring class on the Continent, while sometimes more excitable, and some- times more homely and stupid than in England, is nearly always more poetical. One fact has always struck our attention very strongly in France, and still more in Hol- land. In the worst dwellings of the poor — we do not mean the haunts of the actually vicious and criminal, but in the wretched attics, seven or eight stories high, quite in the roof, and with little light, which must be fearfully close in summer and painfully cold in Avinter — we al- most always see the little window not only ornamented by a coarse muslin curtain, but adorned with flower-pots, or boxes of cress, or mignonette, or some humble vegeta- ble, and evidently tended with the utmost care. There will never be absolute despairing squalor, however great the poverty, where there is tliis love of flowers, this pas- sion for fragments of simple nature. Here is a sketch of the i^roceedings of a poor old soldier, who inhabited the garret opposite that of our philosopher : — " On reconnait le militaire a sa demarche cadencee, a sa moustache grise, ct an ruban qui orno sa boutonuiere ; on lo diviiierait a ses soins attentifs pour le petit jardin qui decore sa galerie aerienne ; car il y a deux choscs particulierement 80 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. .limees de touslesvieux soldats, Ics flcurs et Ics enfans Aussi le vent froid ii'a pu chasser mon voisin de son balcon. II laboure le terrain de scs caisses vertes ; il y seme avec soin les graines de capucine ecarlate, de volubilis, et.de pois de scnteur. Desorniais il viendra tons les jours epier leur germi- nation, defendre les pousses naissantes centre I'herbe parasite ou Tinsecte, disposer les fils conducteurs pour les tiges grim- pantes, leur distribuer avec precaution I'eau et la chaleur. " Que de peines pour amener a bien cette moisson ! Com- bien de fois je le verrai braver pour elle, comme aujourd'liui, le froid ou le chaud, la bise ou Ic soleil ! Mais aussi, aux jours les plus ardents de I'ete, quand une poussiere enflamrnt'e tourbillonnera dans nos rues, quand Toeil, ebloui par I'eclat du platre, ne saura oii se reposer, et que les tuiles 6chauffees nous bruleront de leurs rayonnements, le vieux soldat, assis .sous sa tonnelle, n'apercevra autour de lui que verdure ou que fleurs, et respirera la brise refraichie par un orabrage parfume." How rarely do we find among our town poor this cherishing of flowers and green plants ! and how invari- ably, when we do find it,, is it a sign of a comparatively refined disposition, and hopeful if not easy circumstances ! The same difference of character in the two people manifests itself in other ways. An English artisan will spend any extra earnings in adding to his comforts or luxuries, — a French one in purchasing another ornament. The cottage of the Englishman will often be better fur- nished and niore comfortable ; but everything in it will he for use, not show. The Frenchman will have fewer chairs, a less solid table, and a poorer bed ; but he will probably have a bit of a mirror, or an ornamental clock. He will have scantier and very inferior crockery, but is nearly certain to have a fragment of Sevres china on his chimney-piece or chest of drawers. He will feed much worse in order that lie may look somewhat better. There is something of the swell, and something also of the de- cayed gentleman, about him. He will live in the poorest garret, and on the scantiest crust, — food and lodgings which the English artisan would scout, — in order that he may drink his can sucrec and read his journal at a decent cafe, or take his wife and children a walk ou the BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 81 boule\'ards or in the Tuileries gardens in respectable attire. The desires and expenditure of the Englishman may be for the more solid good,; but Ave doubt whether the preferences of the Frenchman are not far tlie surest guaranty against sinking in the social scale.* The love of the latter for holidays and gala days we hold also to be a wholesome safeguard, even though sometimes carried a little too far. These festivals are something to look forward to, something to save for, something to enliven and embellish an otherwise monotonous existence. Man's nature requires these breaks and brighteners to keep up its elastic spring ; without them he becomes dull and spiritless, or gross ; he cannot without injury to both soul and body live on work and sleep alone ; to keep up heart, to maintain cheerfulness, through the dull routine, the daily repetitions, the hot and dusty thoroughfares of this world's ordinary lots, some of these gay, stirring, en- livening " solutions of continuity " are imperatively needed. We, in this country, have far too few of them ; and it is not easy to say how much of the depth to which poverty allows itself to sink is owing to this paucity. " Lord, help us poor people ! —and fJutt' s my defence, — If we 've nothing to trust to but wisdom and sense ! " The ready and susceptible imagination of the French- man, too, must be of inestimable service in enabling him to embellish and glorify his poverty in ways that an Englishman would never dream of. Xot only we believe are our poor, as a general rule, more discontented with their lot in life than the same class among our mercurial neighbors, bu,t even where submissive and unmurmuring, they are so in a different spirit. The Englishman accepts * "Eidin.s; through Nonuandy one heantiful Sunday evening, I over- heard a French peasant decline the convivial invitation of his compan- ion. 'Why, no, thank you,' said he, ' I must go to the guiiigiicflc for the sake of my wife and the young people, dear souls ! ' " The next Sunday I was in Sussex, and as my horse amhled by a cot- tage, I heard a sturdy boor, who had apparently just left it, grumble forth to a big boy swinging on a gate : 'You sees to the sow, .Tim, there 's a good un ; I be 's just a-going to the Blue Lion, to get rid of my missus and the brats — rot 'em ! ' " — Btdwcr's Enrjland and the Engli'sJi. 4* p 82 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. his meagre fare and liumble position (Inr/gcdhi, ■when tlie Frenchman accepts them cheerfully. The latter makes the Lest of matters, and .puts a Lright face on everything that will hear it ; the former is too apt to take a diametri- cally opposite course. How " un-English " is the follow- ing narrative. The next neighbor of our Philosopher in the garret is an old soldier named Chaufour, miniis one leg and one arm, and earning a scanty subsistence by working at coarse paper articles from long before sunri.-^c till long after nightfall. He explains to his companion that he lost his leg at Waterloo, and his arm " while work- ing in the quarries of Clamart " : — " Apres la grande debacle de Waterloo, j'etaisdemeur^ trois niois aux ambulances pour laisser a ma jambe de bois le temps de pouRser. Une fois en mesurc de re-emboiter le pas, je pris conpe du major et je me dirigeai sur Paris, oii j'esp^rais trouver quelque parent, quelque ami ; mais rieu ; tout ttait parti, ou sous terre. J'avu'ais ^te moins etranger ^ Vienue, a ^ladrid, a Berlin. Cepeudant, poiu* avoir une jarabe de moins a nour- rir, je n'en etais pas plus a men aise ; I'app^tit ^tait revenu, et les derniers sous s'envolaient. "A la v6iite, j'avais rencontre men aucien chef d'escadron, qui se rappclait que je I'avais tire de la bajrarre a Montereau en lui donuant mon cheval, et qui m'avait propose cbez lui place an feu et a la chandelle. Je savais qu'il avait epouse, Tann^e d'avant, un chateau et pas nial de fermes ; de sorte que je pouvais devenir a perpetuite brosseur d'uu millionuaire ; ce qui n'etait pas sans douceur. Restait a savoir si je n'avais rien de mieux a faire. Un soir je me mis a i-eflexion. — '"Yoyous, Cbaufour, que je me dis, il s'agit de se conduire comme \\n homme. La place cbez le commandant te couvi- cnt ; mais ne peux-tu rien faire de mieux? Tu as encore le torse en bon etat et les bras solides ; est ce que tu ne dois pas toutes les forces a la patrie, comme disait I'oncle de Yinceunes ] Pourquoi ne pas laisser quelque ancien plus demoli que toi prendre ses invalides cbez le commandant ? AUons, troupier, encore quelques charges a fond puisqu'il te reste du poignet. Faut pas se repnser avant le tenqis.' " Sur quoi j'allai rcmercier le chef d'escadron et offrir mes sei'vices a \n\ ancien de la battei'ie qui etait rentre a Clamart dans son foi/er res2)ec( if, et qui avait repris lo pince de carrier. BRITISH AND FOREIGN CHARACTERISTICS. 83 " Pendant les premiers mois, je fis le metier de consent, c'est-a-dire, avec plus de mouvements que de besogne ; mais avec de Ja bonne volonte on vient a bout des pierres comma de tout le reste : sans devenir, comme on dit, une tete de colonne, je pris mou rang, en serrefile parmi les bons ouvriers, et je mangeais mon pain de bon appetit, vu que je le gagnais de bon coeur. C'est que, meme sous le tuf, voyez-vons, j'avais garde ma gloriole. L'idee que je travaillais, pour ma part, a changer les roches en maisons, me flattait interieuremeut. Je me disais tout bas, — " ' Courage, Chaufour, mon vieux, tu aides it embellir ta patrie.'' Et 9a-me soutenait le moral. " Malheureusement, j'avais parmi mes compagnons des citoyens un pen trop sensible aux charmes du cognac ; si bien qu'un jour, I'un d'eux, qui voyait sa main gauche k droite, s'avisa de battre le briquet pres d'une mine chargee ; la mine prit feu sans dire gare, et nous envoya une mitraille de cail- loux qui tua trois hommes et m'emporta le bras dont il ne me reste plus que la manche." — "Ainsi, vous etiez de nouveau sans etaf?" dis-je au vieux soldat. — " C"est-a-dire qu'il fallait en changer," reprit-il tranquille- ment. " Le difficile etait d'en trouver un qui se conteutat de cinq doigts au lieu de dix : je le trouvais pourtant." — "Ou celal" — "Parmi les balayeurs de Paris." {Scavengers.) — '' Quoi ! vous avez fait partie — 1 " — " ^ De Pescouade de salubrite : un peu, voisin, et 9a n'est pas mou plus mauvais temps. Le corps de balayage n'est pas si mal compose que malpropre, savez-vous ! II y a la d'an- ciennes actrices qui n'ont pas su faire d'economics, des mai'- chands mines a la bourse ; nous avions meme un professeur d'humanit^s, qui, pour un petit verre, vous recitait du Latin ou des tragedies, a votre choix. Tout 9a n'eut pas pu con- courir pour le prix Monthyon ; mais la misere faisait pardonner les vices, et la gaiete consolait de la misere. J'etais aussi gueux et aussi gai, tout en tachant de valoir lui peu mieux. Meme dans la fange du ruisseau, j'avais gai*de mon opinion que rien ne d^shonore de ce qui pent etre utile au pays." — " Cependant vous avez fini par quitter votre nouvelle profession?" ai-jo repris. — " Pour cause de reform'e, voisin : les balayeurs ont rare- 84 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS, ment Ic pied sec, ct rhumidite a fini par rouvrir les blessures de ma bonne janibe. Je ne pouvais i)his suivre I'escouade ; il a fiilhi deposer les armes. Voila deux mois que j'ai cesse de travailler a Vassahiissement de Paris. "Au premier instant, 9a m'a etourdi. De mes quatre mcmbres, il ne me restait plus que la main droite ; encore avait ellc perdu sa force. Fallait done lui trouver une occu- pation houvf/eoise. Apres avoir cssay6 nn peu de tous, je suis tombe sur le cartonnage ; et me voici fabricant d'etuis pour les pompons dc la garde nationalc ; c'est ime oeuvre peu lu- crative, mais a la portee de toutcs les intelligences. En me levant a quatre heures et en travaillant jusqiC a huit, je gagne 65 centimes (about 6|d) ! Le logement et la gamelle en prennent 50 ; reste ti'ois sous pour les depenses de luxe. Je suis done plus riche que la France, puisque j'equilibre mon budget, et je continue a la servir, puisque^ ^e lui economise ses IMmponsT Now, it is possible that in reproducing these pictures of humble life on the Continent, we may have selected exceptions rather than examples ; it may be that in con- trasting the quiet and even tenor of middle-class life in Germany and France with the turmoil, crush, and hurry of existence in England and America, we have drawn both in s6mewliat too vivid colors, and with too sharp an outline ; still we cannot doubt the general correctness of the impression we liave received and endeavored to convey ; after every discount and deduction has been made the broad fact will still remain, — that if our ana- logues abroad are often too torpid, passive, and unenter- prising, we, on the contrary, are too restless, striving, and insatiable ; that our extreme is assuredly not the hap- piest, nor possibly the noblest ; and that, at all events, without exchanging it for theirs, we might do well to abandon it for some ^z^s^c milieu, in which our course of life might become " a sanity and not a madness." FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. IT is not easy to overestimate the importance of novels, wliether we regard the influence they exercise upon an age, or the indications they afford of its char- acteristic tendencies and features. They come, indeed, under the denomination of " light literature "; but this lit- erature is effective by reason of its very lightness : it spreads, penetrates, and permeates, where weightier mat- ter would lie merely on the outside of the mind — riidis indigestaque moles. We are by no means sure that, with reference to the sphere and nature of the impressions they produce, prose works of fiction do not constitute precisely that branch of the intellectual activity of a nation which a far-seeing moralist would watch with the most vigilant concern, and supervise with the most anx- ious and unceasing care. The highest productions of genius, it is true, — great national epics or lyrics, works of pure reason that revolutionize a philosophy or found a school, histories that become classical and permanent, — the writings of the Shakespeares, Bacons, Descartes, Les- sings, Dantes, Voltaires, and Goethes of all lands, — have unquestionably a wider and a grander range of operation, and leave more profound and enduring traces of their in- fluence : but their effects are less immediate and less di- * Mildred Vernon : a Tale of Parisian Life in the last Days of the Monarchy. Colburn, 1843. Leonie Vermont : a Scene of our Time. Bentley, 1849. Katliie Brande. By Holme Lee. Smith and Elder, 1850. Ruth : a Novel. By the author of Mary Barton. Chapman and Hall, 1853. Framleigh Hall. Hurst and Blackett, 1858. 83 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. rect ; they work deeper, but they work slower ; tliey work upon the few first, and afterwards throiigli these upon the many ; tliey affect the present age prolmbly much less, but future ages infinitely more. There are maiiy reasons why we should look upon novels in this serious point of view. They are the sole or the chief reading of numbers, and these numbers are mainly to be foinid among the rich and idle, whose wealth, leisure, and social position combine to give to their tastes and example an influence wholly out of pro- portion either to their mental activity or to their mental powers. They are th6 reading of most men in their idler and more impressionable hours, when the fatigued mind requires rest and recreation ; when the brain, therefore, is comparatively passive ; and when, the critical and com- bative faculties being laid to sleep, the pabulum offered is imbibed without being judged or sifted. They form, too, an unfortunately large proportion of the habitual reading of the young at the exact crisis of life when the spirit is at once most susceptible and most tena- cious, — " "Wax to receive, and marble to retain" ; when the memory is fresh, and has a greedy and by no means discriminating appetite ; when the moral standard is for the most part fluctuating or imformed ; when ex- perience affords no criterion whereb3'to separate the true from the false in the delineations of life, and the degree of culture is as yet insufficient to distinguish the pure from the meretricious, the sound from the unsound, in taste ; and when whatever keenly interests and deeply moves is accepted and laid to heart, without much ques- tioning whether the emotion is genuine and virtuous, or whether the interest is not aroused by unsafe and un- warrantable means. Finally, novels constitute a princi- pal part of the reading of women, who are always im- pressionable, in whom at all times the emotional element is more awake and more powerful than the critical, whose feelings are more easily aroused and whose esti- mates are more easily influenced than ours, while at the FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 87 same time the correctness of their feelings and the jus- tice of their estimates are matters of the most special and pre-eminent concern. There are peculiarities, again, in works of fiction, which must always secure them a vast influence on all classes of societies and all sorts of minds. They are read without effort, and remembered without trouble. We have to chain down our attention to read other books witli profit ; these enchain our attention of themselves. Other books often leave no impression on the mind at all ; these, for good or evil, for a while or for long, always produce some impression. Other books are efi'ective only when digested and assimilated ; novels usually need no digestion, or rather present their matter to us in an al- ready digested form. Histories, philosophies, political treatises, to a certain extent even first-class poetry, are solid and often tough food, which requires laborious and slow mastication. Novels are like soup or jelly ; they may be drunk off at a draught or swallowed whole, cer- tain of being easily and rapidly absorbed into the system. A branch of literature wliicli exercises an influence so considerable on men of leisure at all times, on men of business in their hours of relaxation, on the young of both sexes, and on the female sex at every age, assuredly demands the most thorough study and the closest censor- ship on the part of those who wish to comprehend, or who aspire to modify, the causes which mould humanity. There can be no doubt that a far larger number of per- sons receive the bias of their course and the complexion of their character from reading novels than from hearinij sermons. We do not, indeed, hear of sudden conversions and entire and enduring changes of life and temper con- sequent on the perusal of romances, such as are occasion- ally said to follow the stirring eloquence of some great divine ; though we believe that more analogous cases miglit be found than is usually supposed, were there any missionary enthusiasts to chronicle them, and were the recipients of the new spirit skilful and careful to trace 88 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. back the liealing influence to its source. But we are convinced that tlie instances are numerous beyond con- ception in which souls trembling and hesitating on the verge of good and evil have been determined towards the former by some scene of fiction falling in their way at the critical moment of their moral history ; in which minds have been sustained in hours of weakness and strengthened in hours of temptation by lifelike pictures of sorrows endured and trials surmounted in virtue of some great principle or. some true sentiment ; and in which sinners, fallen indeed, but not lost, have been in- duced to pause, to recoil, and to recover, by seeing in some work which they had opened only for amusement the hideousness of a crime whose revolting features they could not recognize except when reflected in a mirror. Xumbers ha^'e first, not learned perhaps, but been actually brought to. perceive and realize with practical result the attractions of "whatsoever things are pure, holy, lovely, and of good report," by seeing their vivid delinea- tions in the pages of " an owre true tale." Numbers who might no doubt have acquired their estimates of the rela- tive gravity or excellence of favorite faults or difficult virtues from authorized Bibles or accredited moralists, have in reality learned them — often, alas, blended with a fearful degree of error — from fictitious histories; and seek their personal code of laws in Scott, or Bulwer, or Victor Hugo, or George Sand, or the Countess Halm- Hahn, or Manzoni, in place of drawing it direct and pure from the Catechism or the Gospel. And far larger num- bers still, as we may all of us be conscious from our own experience, owe it to the novels with which they occa- sionally refresh their wayworn spirits along the world's hot and dusty thoroughfare, that the perception of the beautiful, the enthusiasm for the grand, and all the finer sentiments and gentler and tenderer emotions which soften and embellish life, are not utterly dried uj^, or crusted over, or trodden out, amid the fatigues and con- flicts and turmoil of this arid and weary existence. There is yet another consideration which points in the FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NO^^LISTS. 89 same direction. Prose fiction furnishes not only the favorite reading of the young ; it is also the line in Avhich young writers most incline to try their powers. A few of the more enthusiastic make their first essay in verse, but the large majority prefer novels. These are easier, they require less sustained effort, and they are incomparably more certain of an audience. Again, women, as we have said above, are the chief readers of novels ; they are also, of late at least, the chief writers of them. A great proportion of these authoresses too are young ladies. There are vast numbers of lady novelists, ibr much the same reason that there are vast numbers of sempstresses. Thousands of women have nothing to do, and yet are under the necessity of doing something. Every woman can handle a needle tant hien qm mal : every unemployed woman, therefore, takes to sewing. Hundreds of educated ladies have nothing to do, and yet are tormented with a most natural desire, nay, are often under a positive obligation, to do something. Every edu- cated lady can handle a pen tant hien que mal : all such, therefore, take to writing, — and to novel-writing, both as the kind which requires the least special qualification and the least severe study, and also as the only kind which will sell The number of youthful novelists, and of young lady novelists, extant at this moment, passes calculation, and was unparalleled at any former epoch. Indeed, the supply of the fiction market has mainly fallen into tlieir hands ; and it speaks well for the general taste and cultivation of the age, that, under such circumstances, so many of the new novels that pour forth weekly from the press sliould be really interesting and clever, and that so few should be utterly poor or bad. But it is in the nature of things impossible that productions of such a character, from such a source, however able or however captivating, should not be radically and inherently defec- tive. The plot may be exciting, the style may be flowing, the sentiments maybe pleasing and even stirring, and the characters may be natural, interesting, and well sustained ; but the views of life and the judgments of conduct must 90 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGLIE:;TS. be imperfect and superficial, and "svill often l;e tlior- oup;lily unsound. These things cannot bo surely deduced, as is too often fancied, from certain fixed rules and prin- ciples which may be learned a priori ; they depend in a great measure on observation and exjierience, on knowl- edge of the world and of tlie cliaracters that move and act there, and on the ascertained conseciuences of actions and influences of qualities. Kow here the young are necessarily wanting. If the writer be a young man, his experience in life must be brief, imperfect, and inade- quate. If the writer be a young lady, her exp.erience must be not only all this, l)ut must be partial in addition. "Whole spheres of observation, M'hole brandies of character and conduct, are almost inevitably closed to her. Kay, even with respect to the one topic which forms the staple of most novels, and a main ingredient in all, namely, love, and its various phases, varieties, and developments, — her means of judgment and of delineation must be always scanty and generally superficial. She may have felt the passion, it is true ; but she will have felt it only in one form, — the form congenial to her owu nature; she will be able, therefore, in all likelihood, to depict it only under one aspect, and will estimate its character and con- sequences from a personal point of view. She may pjos- sil)ly have enjoyed (or sufi'ered) opportunities of observ- ing the workings of the sentiment in some one of her friends ; but its wilder issues and its fiercer crises are necessarily and righteously hidden from her sight. She may, by dint of that marvellous faculty of sympathy and intuition which is given to those who have felt pro- foundly and suffered long, be able to divine much whicli she cannot discover, and to conceive much which she lias never seen or heard ; and the pure and God-given in- stincts which some women possess in so rare a measure may enable her to distinguish between the genuine and tlie false, the noble -and the low ; but many of the saddest and deepest truths in the strange science of sexual aHec- tion are to her mysteriously and mercifully veiled ; and the knowledge of them can only be purchased at such a FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 91 fearful cost that we cannot wish it otherwise. The inev- itable consequence, however, is, that in treating of that science she labors under all the disadvantages of partial study and superficial insight. She is describing a country of which she knows only the more frequented and the safer roads, with a few of the sweeter scenes and the prettier by-paths and more picturesqvie detours which lie not far from the broad and beaten thoroughfares ; while the rockier and loftier mountains, the more rugged tracks, the more sombre valleys, and the darker and more dan- gerous chasms, are never trodden by her feet, and scarcely ever dreamed of by her fancy. In youth, moreover, and in the youth of women more especially, there is a degree of exaltation of mind and temper which, beautiful as it is, and deeply as we should grieve over its absence, partakes of, or at least has a strong tendency to degenerate into, the morbid and un- sound. It may add to the interest of a tale, but it ren- ders it unfaithful as a picture of life, unsafe as a guide to the judgment, and often noxious in its influence on the feelings. In short, — and to sum up in a single sen- tence the gist of all that we have said, — that branch of the literature of our day which exercises the widest and most penetrating influence on the age, — from wdiich the young and the impressible (nearly all of us, in short, at one period or other) chiefly draw their notions of life, their canons of judgment, their habitual sentiments and feel- ings (so far as these are drawn from literature at all), and their impressions as to what is admirable and right and what is detestable and wrong, — is to a great extent in the hands of writers whose experience of life is seldom wide and never deep, whose sympathies have not yet been chastened or corrected, whose philosophy is inevita- bly superficial, whose judgment cannot possibly be ma- tured, and is not very likely to be sound. The result is, that we are constantly gazing on inaccurate pictures, con- stantly sympathizing with artificial or reprehensible emo- tions, constantly admiring culpable conduct, constantly imbibing false morality. 92 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. It is chiefly with reference to this last point that we are moved at present to bear testimony. A large propor- tion of the novels we have recently perused appear to us to inculcate principles so essentially erroneous, and to hold up to admiration cliaracters and actions so intrinsi- cally culpable and mistaken, that we should consider ourselves wanting in the discharge of our duty as etliical critics if we neglected to enter our protest, and to record the grounds of our dissent. The unsound and immoral doctrines which we wish especially to signalize may be classed under four heads : false notions of honor ; egotis- tical notions of self-sacrifice ; sinful notions of compas- sion ; and distorted notions of the relative enormity of various failings and offences. And we propose to draw our illustrations from tales, all of which are remarkable for merits of no trivial order, and are written Avith the best intentions. Mildred Vernon is a novel of more than ordinary ex- cellence. It is unusually well written ; the characters are well sustained ; the conversations are natural and lively ; the plot is one of great interest and is skilfully developed ; and although nnich of the society into which we are introduced is, both socially and politically, as bad as need be, — the scene being laid among the higlier ranks in Paris towards the close of Louis Philippe's reign, — yet the tone and feeling of the book are good throughout, and the morality, while neither narrow nor severe, is on the whole pure, correct, and even high- minded. The life painted is corrupt and profligate to a startling degree ; but the author steers perfectly clear of the too common and most heinous faults of exciting dan- gerous passions by delineating scenes of temptation and of sin, or of enlisting the special interest of the reader on behalf of the splendid or voluptuous sinner. But this pre\'alent healthiness of sentiment and j'usfcsse crcsprit throw into still stronger relief the false notions of honor which are described and inculcated in the main denoue- ment of the story. FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 93 Mildred Vernon is the beautiful, proud, pure, but somewhat puritanical and rigid wife of a baronet of strong passions, weak principles, ample wealth, and deep- rooted but not ostentatious selfishness. She loves him as an ordinary English wife loves an ordinary English husband, — that is, it was a love-match, — and she is most dutifully devoted to him in all points; but her deeper feelings have never been awakened, and she has no more notion that she could ever be tempted than that she could ever sin. Sir Edward brings her to Paris, finds access into one of the best circles of the Faubourg St. Germain, and establishes his wife therein ; and then himself falls under the influence of one of the most fas- cinating and vicious of the lionncs who infested the higher ranks in that profligate capital at that profligate epoch. He becomes utterly bewitched, and all ]iis bad qualities are brought out by tlie corrupting and degrad- ing connection. He neglects Mildred, insults her, out- rages all her sensibility of feeling and all her ideas of virtue and decorum, unpardonably offends her dignity as a wife, and, as she is very strict and very proud, irretriev- ably alienates her affections. She has loved him for being what she had believed him ; she how despises and dislikes him, because she sees him as he really is. Dur- ing the whole of tliis period she is constantly with the Duchess de Montevreux and her family. The son, Gas- ton de Montevreux, a cultivated and superior man, Avith all tlie French agreeable politeness and too much of the French laxity of morals, Ijecomes ardently attached to her, sees her daily, and shields her as much as he can from a knowledge of her husband's misbehavior. She, who is innocence itself, and cold not from nature but from habit and education, is for long wholly unconscious both of his devotion and of the degree in which licr own feelings have become involved ; but as soon as the truth flashes upon her, she acts as an English matron should aiul will. She has never the least notion of weakly yielding ; but she perceives that her sentiments toward the young duke are such as ought not to be indulged, 94 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. and that, deserted as she is l)y lier liusbaud, slic would he more litly and safely situated among her friends in England. Thither aceordingly she returns, — learning too plainly from the separation tliat Gaston has now he- come all in all to her. After an interval of some months he follows her; circumstances bring about a mutual eclaircissc7nent ; she does not deceive him as to the state of her affections, but compels him to be generous and to respect her. His love and character become purified by the i)urity and elevation of hers ; she reminds liim of all he owes to his family and his country, and at length in- duces him to show himself worthy of a love of which neither need be ashamed, instead of hankering after one Avhich could only be successful by becoming sinful, and to return to France, and seek in the noble duties and excitements of public life either strength to forget or patience to await. In consequence, contrary to all the principles and traditions of his iamily, who had hitherto held scrupulously aloof from the Orleans regime, he enters the Chamber, and becomes a distinguished senator and speaker. ]\Ieanwliilo Sir Edward Vernon is pursuing in Paris and at Baden a course of dissipation wliicli is rapidly wasting his fortune and undermining his health, already shattered by a wound received in a disreputable duel. His wife's generosity and the aid of her friends rescue him from prison ; but he declines to reunite their lives, and leaves her formally and finally. jMildred, who has returned to Paris in order to make her benevolent ar- rangements for Sir Edward, is now daily in Gaston's company : all that is innocent in their love is gratitied, — all that woidd be culpable and unworthy is banished, even in thought, far from them ; and both, though in dif- ferent measure, grow wiser, nobler, tenderer, and stronger, alike from the permitted happiness and the enforced con- trol. All this is beautifully painted. But now comes the crisis of the story, and the occasion of the false mo- rality. Gaston had been betrothed, as is customary in France, to a young cousin of his, Olympe, then only FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 95 about fifteen and in a convent. He had scarcely seen her ; he had no feeling for her : the affair was a contract, a plan, a family arrangement. She was very pretty and very rich. Tlie idea of marrying her was of course, in Gaston's new circumstances and under his new and purer notions of morality, rendered simply impossible to him by his absorbing and resolute attachment to Lady Ver- non ; and on one pretext or another, all consideration of the affair had been postponed. Gaston waited for some occurrence or reason which should avowedly release him from his engagement. AVhile matters were in this posi- tion, nearly the whole of Olympe's fortune was in\'ested by a speculative guardian in the scrip of a railway, the bill for authorizing which (the concession, as it is there called) was then passing through the Chamber. The success of this bill would double Olympe's dowry ; the rejection of it would sweep it nearly all away. Gaston, wholly unconscious of this complication, carefully exam- ines the railway project on its merits, decides against them, and makes so convincing a speech in the Chamber, that the concession is refused. (All this, be it said, is absurdly improbable in France at such a time. But let that pass.) That very day he had written to the mother of his cousin, to decline fulfilling his engagement with her ; but Madame de Montevreux had intercepted and delayed the letter, and Olympe's ruin, caused by Gas- ton's speecli, made it apparently imiMssihle to send it now. Tlie painful and difficult character of the dilemma is visible at a glance, especially when we add that, to complete it, and before the sacrifice is consummated, Sir Edward Vernon dies suddenly and as disreputably as he had lived, and leaves Mildred free. The solution of a difficulty such as this is as good a test as could well be devised of the soundness of the moral philosophy of the author, and the principles and resolution of the actors involvTd. In this case, it is solved according to the radically immoral notions of " honor " prevalent in the highest ranks of most countries. Gaston at first is determined to be true to his instincts 96 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. and his love ; Init liis mother and tlie pious and holy con- fessor (the Aljljc de Nangis) and poor Mildred, — whose somewhat exalte disinterestedness and generous concern for Gaston's reputation Madame do Mont^vreux is cruel enough to enlist for her purposes, — all decide against him ; and he yields. He marries his cousin, wliom he does not love ; and sacrifices Mildred, whom he does love, and whose devoted fondness he has gained Ijy years of passionate promises and vows, and more recently by daily intercourse of the most intimate and confiding sort. And all parties concerned are regarded as having done not only what was right, but what was most eminently and sublimely virtuous. Now what are the motives which decide them, and the arguments to which Gaston yields ? That " the world " \\-ill attribute Gaston's breaking off the match to the loss of Olympe's fortune, and that the irreproachable good fame and sacred " honor of an ancient and noble family " will be in consequence irreparably tarnished. " The Due de IMontevreux " will he thought to have acted meanly. It is true, the mother urges both to Mildred and to her son that Lady A^ernon's reputation would be in danger of being compromised (again the eyes of " the world "), as she would be considered the cause of Gaston's having taken such a step ; but this is only thrown in as a make-weight, and is clearly of little real influence, inasmuch as, if the first explanation would be so sure of adoption by the censorious j)ublic, the second need not have been sought for. AYhat, then, is the plain English of the whole ? Gaston commits a Idchde awA ^ crime to avoid heing thought guilty of a baseness. He behaves cruelly to Mildred, lest the world should believe he has acted shabbily to Olympe. He breaks his faith, lest he should be supposed to have stained his honor. With his whole heart and soul bound up in one woman, he goes to the altar with another, and plights to her his exclusive devotion and his eternal tenderness. He pre- fers the reality to the appearance of doing wrong and acting falsely. A saintly priest blesses and applauds the hideous falsehood and the barbarous sacrifice; and all FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 97 the four participators in tins sin fancy tliey have risen to the very zenith of martyred virtue. This error is the more to be deplored because, in one most touching episode in these volumes, the writer has instinctiv^ely seized upon the true moral view, where merely conventional thinkers would have missed it. The story of Madame de Boislambert is one of the most touching we ever read. Pure, noble, and tender, with all the mingled softness and intensity of feeling due to her Spanish and Moorish origin, and brouglit up by her mother in the doctrine that a promise, to whomsoever and under whatsoever circumstances given, is to be sacredly fulfilled, she in early youth yiekls her affections and plights her troth to a remarkable young man named Lionel Chavigny. He is bourgeois ; and her family, there- fore, would forbid the match had they ever dreamed of its possibility, and liad they not designed their daughter for tlie Marquis de Boislambert, a fine dignified general, but now in middle life. Tlie poor girl consults her con- fessor, the Abbe de Nangis, wlio, finding how irrevocably her heart is fixed, at last consents to aid her so far as to persuade her mother to postpone tlie proposed marriage with the general for a year or two. Lionel is summoned to Spain : in about six months, a report of his marriage, false, but so corroborated as to leave no room for question, reaches her; and in the revulsion of grief and despair, slie consents' to marry INI. de Boislambert whenever her parents wish it. With him she enjoys seven years of such modified happiness as a heart so deeply wounded can obtain ; for her husband, though somewhat formal, and too dignified to manifest the true and deep affection which he feels, is an excellent and noble friend, full of kindness and indulgence ; and she has two sweet children, on whom slie lavishes all the boundless tenderness of her nature. Suddenly Chavigny reappears ; she learns the mistake which has lost her to him forever, and sees how fearfully the bitterness of her supposed faithlessness has changed him. Her self-reproach is deep and dangerous : she mourns over and would fain redeem the moral ruin 5 o 98 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. she has wrought. Lionel, whose knowledge of the world and cool consummate science make him one of the most formidable of men, takes advantage of her mood, and in a moment of wild and passing delirium she is lost. It was but a moment ; tlie revulsion was immediate ; lier shame and grief were overwhelming. She leaves her hus- band's house alone; for Chavigny declines to ruin her reputation as well as her peace by accepting the sacrifice she offers ; but she will not deceive the husband she has betrayed, and refuses to return home. The story soon becomes known, and even in Paris excites deep regret and sympathy ; for Louise is universally worshipped and beloved. Every one — even her husband — feels it im- possible to attach the idea of fj2iilt to the momentary frenzy of one so pure ; and M. de Boislambert, when, after the lapse of a year, he has discovered her retreat, allows her to see her children, and, conquered by his own love and her deep contrition and intrinsic excellence, offers pardon and ]'econciliation. The scene which ensues is one of the most affecting in any work of fiction. The poor aftlicted, himibled wife, overcome by her husband's attachment and generosity, and yearning more than words can tell to be back with him and with her children, yet fears that she ought not to accept a forgiveness of whicli few could com- prehend the grandeur or the beauty, and which, therefore, would expose him to ridicule and evil tongues. So far all is sound and genuine feeling. But now comes in that fascinating notion of self-sacrifice, so fatal M-hen per- verted and sentimental ; and Louise, feeling that she has "no right" to be so happy, determines that duty compels her to make all connected with her as unhappy as slie can. Two considerations finally, after a fearful strugj^le, decide her to decline her husband's love, and to leave him forever because she liad left him for an hour. Fird, she says that she has " the sins of two souls upon her conscience," and her life must henceforth be devoted to an expiation for them both : so she becomes a Sceur dc Charite, and deserts the duty of consoling and cheering the husband and the children whom God has given her, FALSE MORALITY OF LADY IJOVELISTS. 99 for that of consoling and cheering the miscellaneous poor whom she may find in hospitals ! And, spxondly, she argues that she must not expose her husband to the ridi- cule which " the world " attaches to the husband who forgives ; and, to clinch the argument, when one of the most outrageous lorettcs of Paris, in passing her, lets fall a remark about " improper persons," she returns to jM. de Boislambert, and says (as if this practical proof admitted no rejoinder), " You see, Ferdinand, it cannot be ! " If this be not deplorable weakness and distortion, our notions of right and wrong must be far astray. Zeonie Vermont is, like Ilildrcd Vernon, a picture of happiness abandoned and love trampled under foot in obe- dience to misty and crooked notions of what honor and dignity enjoin. The Comte de Briancour, a legitimist noble of the true old incurable type, adopts and brings up with his own children the son and daughter of a com- rade of inferior rank, — in fact, a sergeant of his regi- ment, — who had saved his life in battle. The brother and sister receive a good education, but grow up as dif- ferent as it is possible to conceive. Philippe Vermont, who proves to have considerable talents as an artist, is a type of everything that is mean and revolting in the French character. Ambitious, envious, treacherous, and malignant, without principles as without convictions, an admirer of sensual beauty and caring only for sensual enjoyment, he adopts Republican views in their worst and lowest form, goes to the metropolis, and there leads a life of alternate political intrigue, profligate pleasure, and pictorial success. His sister Lcouie — an ardent and en- thusiastic republican ; a true daughter of " the People," and believing above all tilings in the people's nobleness ; grand, beautiful, and haughty, full of elevated sentiments and commanding courage — reads her brother's character to its very depths, and distrusts, despises, and dislikes him. Ferdinand de Briancour, the only son of the count, is a young poet of honorable and refined senti- ments, considerable ability, and liberal though decidedly 100 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. monarchical in his political opinions. Brought up with Luonie in the retirement of a country-house, he, as might be expected, falls in love with her; and slie after a wliile returns his affection, with all the concentrated strength of her vigorous and unsophisticated nature. But she is too proud to dream of marrying Ferdinand witliout the count's consent, and the count's consent both the lov- ers well know will never be given to a mesalliance. So they resolve to love on, and wait patiently i'or bet- ter days. In the mean time the whole iamily go to Paris, and the llevolution of 1848 breaks out. Phi- lippe Vermont, who has been a leading member of those secret societies where socialism was preached as a creed and assassination enjoined as a duty, and which so largely contributed to the fatal success of that most deplorable outbreak, becomes a great man, and is represented as holding the position actually assigned to Louis Blanc. He revels in all the joys of luxury and power ; his selfishness, meanness, and the utter insincer- ity of all his ultra-liberal professions, become daily more manifest ; and ever fresh instances of his profligacy un- veil his character more and more to his disgusted connec- tions. With the establishment of regular government his post is taken from him ; he fails (wliile Ferdinand succeeds) in being elected a member of the Chamber, and sinks down into one of the most desperate and dishonest of the insurgent conspirators of June. The dreadful scenes of that three days' conflict are well described. Philippe is there, but in safety, and adds cowardice to his other vices. He is on the barricades at last ; and when the gallant and saintly Archbishop of Paris appeared amid the combatants, cross in hand, towards the eiid of the third day, to prevent further bloodshed, Philippe's was supposed to be the hand which fired the fatal shot which slew that venerated prelate, whose death struck both parties with horror. Philippe escapes to England ; but is burnt in effigy by the populace, and condemned 2)ar contumacc by the authorities. And now comes into play the paltry, distorted, fanci- FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 101 fill morality which we denounce. As soon as this catas- trophe and Philippe's reported share in it become kno\A'n, L^onie, though heart-broken by the conviction, deter- mines that her engagement with Ferdinand must be broken off; that their union thenceforth would be a crime in her and an infamy to him ; and not only his saintly sister, Madame Isabelle, and the saintly priest, the Abbe de Lavergne, but Ferdinand himself, while wild with grief at the decision, at once accept it as obviously and indisputably inevitable. The marriage from that mo- ment becomes in the eyes of all a guilty impossibilitij. The author's mind here seems to grow as muddy as those of her heroines and heroes ; and her development of this, the denouement of her story, is singularly weak and inconclusive. Observe : — The engagement between Ferdinand and L^onie was entered into with the full knowledge on the part of both of Philippe's utter low- ness and unworthiness of nature ; neither of them dreamed that the brother's vice could tarnish or obscure the sister's inherent nobleness, or render her union with a high-minded and long-descended gentleman other than an equal and a righteous match : and both Madame Isa- belle and the Abbe sanctioned and blessed the project. They subsequently discover that Philippe has seduced and ruined a poor girl in whom they were deeply in- terested, and that his desertion has driven her to sui- cide ; but their pain and indignation lead to no ideas menacing their love. They learn that he is the leader of a band of secret conspirators, whose object is anarchj'^ and pillage, and among whose means is murder ; yet this even raises no barrier between the lovers. They know him to be infamous in every way, and by every title ; yet never dream that the infamy of the brother disgraces or implicates the sister, or makes her a thing which an honorable man may not take to his bosom and cover Avith his name. But no sooner do they see him burnt in effigy amid the curses of the mob whom he had aban- doned and misled, — no sooner do they learn that he (like so many other insurgents) has been condemned to UNIVERSITY OF . c:ALIFOIV>v' 1 . . 6ANTA BARBARA COLLEGE LIBRARY 102 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. the galleys he had all along dcscrverJ, — no sooner do they hear that his is said to be the hand which slew the Arch- bishop (thoujrh no evidence of the fact can be obtained, and thougli the tenor of the narrative implies that the fatal shot, if fired by him at all, was not designed for the martyred prelate, but for a personal antagonist with whom he was struggling in a mortal conflict), — than the mask falls from their eyes at once, and they perceive, as by a flash of lio-htuinrr, that " a name " so infamous as tliat of Vermont can never mingle with a name so noble as tliat of Briancour! What hollow seliishness, what cruel pride, are here decked out in the rich plumes of " Honor ! " What a poor and unreal passion comes in to claim the crown of martyrdom, and calls upon Eeligion to cast her halo round tlie shallow fallacy ! For, of course, the Abbe applauds, and even urges the self-sacri- fice ; and sends Leonie with " upturned eyes " and broken heart into a convent. Observe once more (that we may tear away the veil completely from this exalte and high- sounding sophistry) : Philippe Vermont has committed crimes and meannesses xcorthy of the galleys, yet Leonie, indignant and disgusted as she is, feels no dishonor re- coiling upon her, nor does Ferdinand shrink from the sister on account of the brothers abject and alien nature ; but as soon as he receives (though in liis absence) the legal recompense of his deeds, then all must be ended between tliem. He is already so infamous that no con- demnation, however public, can make him more so : his condemnation teaches tlicm nothing new, but it proclaims all to the world ; and herein lies the sting, the difference, the damning and deciding fact ! Leonie renounces her affianced husband, and Ferdinand accepts the renunciation, not because Philippe is a cowardly and blood-stained ruffian, with whom the remotest connec- tion is inlierent sliame, but because he has been dis- covered and denounced as such. And finally, to com- plete the distortion of view manifest tliroughout : — All the blood which Philippe has indirectly shed, all the ig- norant assassins whose hands he has armed and whose FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 103 fury he lias whetted, raise no dividing cloud between Leonie and her betrothed ; but in a civil conflict he acci- dentally slays an archbishop who is bearing the emblem of peace to the insurgents; he is believed to- have un- designedly imbrued his hands in the blood of a venerated prelate; — and forthwith the avenging angel, v\dio has connived at all the lay slaughter for which the same criminal is accountable, stands with his flaming sword between the innocent lovers, and drives them from their common paradise ' Once for all: on this subject of "self-sacrifice," we would exhort sentimental and ethical romance writers to clear and purify their fantastic and flatulent morality, and substitute healthy strength for morbid and unnatural ex- citement. The power of surrendering and renouncing the dearest hopes and happiness of life at the clear command of DUTY, whether that duty be religious, political, or linked with the affections, is the divinest of human faculties, and its exercise affords the sublimest spectacle that can be witnessed on this earth ; but to make this sacrifice to family pride, to the world's breath, to the wrong passions or the shallow prejudices of others, is a spurious and his- trionic counterfeit. It is building an altar to a false god ; it is endowing with your dearest wealth the shrine of a mistaken faith ; it is enthroning and worshipping a weak- ness which, however amiable and unselfish, is a weakness still. And when, as in almost all these instances is the case, the sacrifice made involves the happiness of another person as well as our own, and entails, as usually happens, deception practised on a third, the deed becomes a wrong and a cruelty as well as a mistake. And considering the tendency, so prevalent among all moralists and most scru- pulous and sincere minds, to imagine a course of conduct to be especially virtuous simply because it is especially difficult and painful ; and the probability therefore that these heroic sacrifices of ourselves and others will gener- ally be made in those moods of exaggerated generosity and feverish enthusiasm which are always dangerous, often artificial, and almost inevitably transient, — it is 104 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. especially incumbent on all who venture to paint such scenes and describe tlie feelin,^s they excite, to beware lest they conCuund and misapply the fundamental prin- ciples ol' duty and justice, and lead tiiose who desire to he guided by them to mistake idolatry for piety, and rush into misery at the dictate of an unsound and inflated sen- timent when they fancy they are obeying the solemn voice of a divine decree. Frequent errors on this subject bring discredit on the grandest virtue possible to man. We ought to be able to admire not only the courage of social martyrs, but tlieir wisdom likewise, and not be perpetual- ly condemned to the demoralizing task of lamenting that the power of acting right should be so often divorced from tlie faculty of seeing straight. That " diversity of gifts " which assigns strong sense and sagacity to one man, and purity and disinterested purpose to another ; that appar- ent poverty of the moral nature, which seems as if it could not afi'ord to endow tlie same person with excel- lence and with talent, which makes the good so often feeble in intellect and the sensible so often frail in con- science, — is one of the graA^est trials to our faith ; — and novelists have done much to make it heavier still. Kathie Branch is another tale of injudicious and nn- kind, because self-considering, self-sacrifice. The story is one of uncommon beauty, full of exquisite and gentle sen- timent simply and charmingly expressed, and distinguished by a sustained elevation wholly free from exaggeration. Kathie's mother is a widow, in narrow but not uncomlbrt- able circumstances, with four or five children, of whom Kathie is the eldest and most important. She is betrotlied to a sensible and exemplary young curate, and they are to be married in the spring. But her only brother, Stephen, is an idle, selfish, and utterly ignoble creature, caring for nothing but his own pleasures, and indifferent to his I'am- ily, of which he is tlie chief burden, instead of being its chief support. He has plenty of ability ; but he has no sense of decency, duty, or affection ; and he will not work. His mother strains her slender means to send him to the FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 105 University ; where lie disgraces himself, incurs debts to the amount of more than a thousand pounds in two years, and ends by getting himself expelled. In addition to this, he is mean enough to sponge upon his sister, whom he has impoverislied, to supply his own hixuries and fancies. His family, in place of letting him meet the penalty of his wick- edness and cruel folly, and forcing him to support himself, submit to the greatest privations to satisfy his creditors, and allow him, without a word of reproach or exhortation, — without even pointing out to him his obvious duty, which he does not even think of seeing, — to remain idly and expensively at home. Here was the first moral error : any one so selfish, insensible, and abject, could obviously be brought round only by the heavy pressure of personal suffering, and should have been forced to meet his own difficulties and atone for his own sins. But this was not all. In order to pay Stephen's debts and support Stephen's idleness, the small dowry which was to have enaljled Kathie to marry Felix Mayne had to be surrendered, and the mar- riage had to be indefinitely postponed. Here was the second error, — one more serious and patent than the first. This was not self-sacrifice alone ; it was sacrificing the happiness of another, who ought to have been and was dearer than herself, to her own views of what was right and fitting. It was sacrificing a noble lover, whom she might have blessed, to a wretched brother whom her gener- osity could not redeem, but could only harden and confirm in his evil ways. Still, something might be said in defence of her disinterested error, for she was her mother's main stay ; and when once the resolution to pay Stephen's debts had reduced them to poverty, her presence at home could scarcely have been dispensed with. A few years pass on. Stephen, for whom so much had been endured and foregone, pursues a course of worthless- ness ill-fitted to recompense those who had so loved and served him ; Kathie grows thin and worn with toil, wait- ing, and soreness of heart ; and Felix Mayne becomes soured and saddened by his loveless and solitary life. At last Kathie sees that it is wrong and selfish to retain 5* 106 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMEts^TS. a love wliicli it may be years before she is able to reward; so slie absolves Felix from liis engagement. But Felix lias become prosperous and famous. lie refuses to be set free, declares he has enough for all, and urges her to bring her mother to live with tliem ; for to this motlicr tlie family is now reduced. It is impossible to assign any sober or valid grounds for her refusal. But she does re- fuse ; given over to this distorted notion of self-sacrifice, she is deaf to his entreaties, cruel to his enduring love, tells him that her mother could not bear dependence, sends him empty away ; and then sinks back In-okeh- hearted upon her desolate and darkened life. Kow we do not say that a woman — and a noble and tender- hearted woman, too — might not have acted thus ; but we do say that the author ought to have represented this refusal as a deplorable error and not a sublime virtue, and to have pointed out how far the want of sound judgment detracted from the value of the noble impulse. The grander the moral faculty, the more important is it that it should be enlisted in a righteous cause. Framlcigh Hall is a novel of much interest and of many faults, but of great promise also. It is evidently the production of a lady, and of a young lady, wlio has read and thought more than she has seen or felt ; but of whose powers, when they have been developed and en- riched by the experience of life and a more wide and va- ried knowledge of the world, we are inclined to augur very higlily. Tlie characters are all distinctly conceived, and their individuality is preserved throughout the tale, — a sure sign of clear thought and careful workmanship. The writer is evidently worthy of guidance and of warn- ing, and we feel certain will take neither ill ; and there- fore we have selected her romance as an example of wrong notions on a subject on wdiich it is peculiarly important for women to have right ones. Her two heroines — one singularly attractive, and the other singularly excellent — set about committing a great sin under the delusion that they axe obeying a solemn duty, and exercising a most FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 107 virtuous and generous self-denial ; and the authoress seems almost wliolly unconscious what an ethical enor- mity she is liolding up to admiration. Grenville is a young man of good property and consid- erable talents, handsome and elegant in his person, and, when h.e pleases, agreeable in society ; but without one single amiable or estimable quality. A tyrant at home and at school ; cruel, passionate, and brutal while a child, and through all subsequent stages up to finished man- hood ; utterly selfish, and incapable of affection, tenderness, gratitude, or any generous and gentlemanly sentiment, though sometimes putting on an external varnish of good manners ; rude and even ruffianly, not only to his scliool- niates, but to his mother, his sister, and his betrothed, — he is about the most unredeemedly bad and detestable character ever drawn. Maurice Delamere is just the reverse of all this : of a delicate, nervous, and susceptible organization, physically timid, though morally and con- scientiously courageous ; refined, cultivated, generous, and affectionate, but too irresolute to make his way in the world, and too shrinking and too conscious of his own defects ever to do himself justice in the eyes of others ; not fitted to win the liearts of ordinary women, but sure to make any woman happy who covild understand and appreciate him, and sure to be eternally grateful for such appreciation exactly because he felt it was what he could expect from few; — just the man also to be Gren- ville's victim ; as accordingly he is, from infancy to death, Grenville has a sister, Isabella, in all respects his oppo- site, — somewhat sickly and not at all attractive, but a woman of strong principles and warm affections, thor- oughh^ amialde and attached even to her brother, though painfully and reluctantly conscious of his unworthiness, and long a sufferer from his hard and brutal selfishness. With her and her mother lives the heroine, Eugenia, a portionless cousin, beautiful, vivacious, uncultivated, and untamed ; but with all a woman's best instincts native and unspoiled Avithin her. While very young, and inca- pable of estimating character, she attracted the fancy of 108 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. her cousin Grenville, \vho Avas charmed liy liev ,ii,race and beauty, and longed for her as a plaything and an orna- ment ; and, pleased with his attentions and ignorant of liis vice, she thouglitlessly consented to engage herself to him. He entered the army, and was some time absent. Even when at home he paid her scarcely any attention, yet exacted from her the amplest devotion and incessant compliance with his whims. She had no real affection for him, and began to weary of his selfishness ; but still continued to consider herself as pledged some day or other to become his wife. Meanwhile she met Maurice in society, and gradually grew intimate with him. His conversation and character opened a new world to lier. She grew to be conscious of her want of culture, and to be anxious to supply the want. ]\Iaurice aided her : not only developed and aroused her dormant sensil)ilities of mind and spirit, but supplied from the riches of his own nature the pabulum needed by the newly awakened want. There is no influence so profound or irresistible as that exercised over an intellectual woman by the man M'ho first stirs that intellect into conscious life, and can. lead it to the treasures which it longs to rifle, and guide it through the flowery and starry pathways which it yearns to tread. Eugenia, whose heart has never been touched, becomes unwittingly attached to Maurice ; and Maurice, who is quite unaware of her engagement to his enemy and evil genius, loves her with intensest fervor. She soon becomes aware of this ; and a visit which Grenville pays to his home, wherein he displays all the coarseness and violence of his bad and ungovernable nature, makes her feel forcibly the contrast of the two men, and deter- mine that she can never give herself to so unbearable a master. But Isabella, the suffering and affectionate sister of this domestic wretch, perceives the growing attachment ; and aware how fatal it will be to her brother's hopes and ha})piness, sets resolutely to work to counteract it. She laiows that her brother is wholly unworthy of a heart like Eugenia's ; she is dimly, but refuses to be clearly, FALSE MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 103 conscious that he will maltreat her and make her mis- erable ; yet still she believes that the loss of his betrothed will not only disappoint him into fury, but drive him irretrievably into evil courses : for though as incapa- ble of appreciating Eugenia as of deserving her, he. un- doubtedly loves her with a passion which is compounded of artist admiration and animal desire. Accordingly Miss Grenville, thougli cognizant of the true and faithful mu- tual tenderness of Maurice and Eugenia, forgetting how sacred such affection is, determines to make these two wretched that she may make one man imperfectly and transiently happy, and to sacrifice two noble and loving hearts to the pleasure of gratifying and the hope of redeeming her bad brother. She will blight their lives and mar their souls rather than that he should lose his plaything and his sweetmeat. She persuades and almost . compels Eugenia into the conspiracy against herself, Ijy representing to her what she owes to Grenville's father, to her own youthful promise, and to the prospect of re- claiming the irreclaimable ; and, strange to say, her cousin yields, to these wretched arguments, and consents to aban- don jMaurice, whom she loves, and to marry Grenville, whom she dreads, despises, and is fast learning to abhor. Now, according to our reading of the moral law, such conduct is foolishly and scandalously wicked ; and no self-suffering involved in it can make it otherwise. To marry one man while loving and loved by another, is about the most grievous fault that a decent woman can commit. It is a sin against delicacy, against purity even, against justice, against kindness, against truth. It involves giving that to legal right which is guilty, and shameful when given to anything but reciprocal affection. It involves a double treachery and a double cruelty. It involves wounding the spirit, withering the heart, per- haps blighting the life and soiling the soul, of the one who is abandoned and betrayed. It involves the speedy disenchantment and the bitter disappointment of the one who is mocked by the shadow where he was promised tlie substance, and who grasps only the phantom of a 110 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. soulless beauty, and the husk, the shell, the skeleton of a dead affection. It entails ceaseless deception, at home and abroad, by day and nij^ht, at our down-sitting and our up-rising ; dece])tion in every relation, — decep- tion in the tenderest and most out-s])eaking moments of existence. It makes the whole of life a weary, diflicult. degrading, unrewarded lie. A right-minded woman could scarcely lay a deeper sin upon her soul, or one more cer- tain to bring down a fearful expiation. For Woman, in very truth, this is the sin against the Holy Ghost, — ihe " sin unto death," — the sin which casts a terrible dark- ness over both worlds. Yet here are two pure and virtu- ous maidens preparing and persuading to commit it out of mere disinterested tenderness ; and a third descriliing the Suttee, and, with apj^lauding gestures, though with streaming eyes, encouraging the human sacrifice. ISTovelists err grievously and haljitually in their esti- mates of the relative culpability of certain sins, failings, and backslidings. It must be admitted that the Church and the world too generally err as grievously, and in the same direction. Frailties, which often indicate nothing worse than too much tenderness and too little strength, are spoken of and treated with a cruel harshness which should be reserved for, and might fitly be lavished en, the bitter, selfish, or malignant passions. The grasping and cruel man is gravely rebuked ; on the ieeble and erring woman is poured forth a Hood of virtuous indignation. The weak flesh is beaten with many stripes ; the wicked spirit is gently told to go and sin no more. The tyian- nical and selfish temper, that makes every one around it miserable, is blamed as an unamiable fault ; the -yielding folly, which can refuse nothing to one it loves, is de- nounced as an unpardonable sin. Provided a man is strictly honest, decorous in demeanor, and what we call " moral," that is, not impure, in conduct, he is accepted by the novelist, he passes current in the world, he a])- pears unrebuked bei'ore the altar; though he be a tyian- nical husband and a brutal father, though he be an abject FALSE MOKALITY OF LADY NO\*ELISTS. Ill flatterer, a cold hypocrite, or a haughty Pharisee ; though he never hesitates for an instant either to gratify his own feelings or to trample on those of others. But pro- vided a woman, however young, however ignorant of the world's ways, however desolate and sorely tried, has un- loosed for one moment the girdle of her maiden inno- cence, — though the lapse may have been instantaneous, delirious, instantly repented, and resolutely retrieved, — though in her essential nature she may still be all that is noble, affectionate, devoted, womanly, and unstained, — she is punished without discrimination as the most sunk of sinners ; and, what is more especially to our present purpose, writers of fiction represent her as acquiescing in the justice of the sentence. Now we say unhesitatingly that these are not righteous, as most assuredly they are not Christian, judgments. Far be it from us to say one word calculated to render less strong, less lofty, less thorny, or less insurmountable, the barrier wliich protects female chastity in our land, or to palliate untruly that frailty which is usually a deplor- able weakness, and sometimes a heinous sin. Its gravity cannot easily be overstated ; and, God knows, the penalty exacted is always most terrifically adequate. But we do say that truth and justice are both violated by those writers who persist in representing sins of frailty in all instances as either inherently so grave in their conse- quences -to happiness, or so surely indicative of lost or absent excellence, — and therefore calling for such fierce denunciation, — as those sins of malignant passion, selfish spirit, and bitter temper, which are so usually accepted as natural, venial, and normal. The indulgence of the bad passions is surely worse than the indulgence of the soft ones ; though it is guilty, because weak, in both cases. Yielding to temptation must be always sinful ; but yield- ing to wishes not in themselves nor at all times wrong, cannot justly be condemned so sternly as yielding to pas- sions inherently and invariably vicious, mean, or cruel. In this direction, at least, lay the judgment and the sym- pathies of Jesus, as the whole tenor of his words and 112 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. deeds proclaims ; for while he denounced the hard and cruel rulers of the land, the grasping lawyer and the supercilious Pharisee, with an indignation that was re- freshingly human, he comforted and ])ardoned the I'rail wife and the weeping Magdalene with a grave tendei'ne.^s that was unmistakably divine. He who spake as never man spake, he who saw what few other men could see, knew that, in the woman Avho has gone astiay through the weakness of an ill-placed or thirsting affection, there might yet lie untouched depths of purity, self-devotion, and capacity for the loftiest virtue, Avhich it would le vain to look for in the man whose cold and sellish bosom no tender or generous emotion had ever thawed, or in the man " who trusted in himself that he was righteous, and despised others." These remarks have been suggested to us by the repe- rusal of a most beautiful and touching tale, wherein the erroneous moral estimate we are signalizing appears in a very mild form ; and which, indeed, woidd appear to have been written with the design of modifying and correcting it, though the author's ideas were not quite clear or posi- tive enough to enable her to carry out boldly or develop fully the conception she had formed. • Mrs. Gaskell's novel of Ruth is too well known to lay us under the necessity of narrating the story in detail. Paith, innocent and beautiful, left an orphan and without connections, is turned out of doors at sixteen by a harsh and hasty mistress, in whose establishment she had been placed to learn dress-making ; and not knowing whither to turn in her despair, is persuaded by a gentleman, who had already half engaged her youthful fancy, to accept shelter and assistance from him. She goes astray, scarcely, if at all, knowino- that she is doing wrono', but from a <:entleness of nature that never dreams of resisting the influence or the persuasions of those she loves. After a while her lover deserts her ; and the remarks and behavior of tlie Avorld, and the teachings of an excellent dissenting minis- ter and his sister, awaken her to a perception of the error she has committed and the liuht in which that error is FALSS MORALITY OF LADY NOVELISTS. 113 regarded. The process by which her character is purified and elevated, and her fault redeemed, through the influ- ence of ]\Ir. Benson and her passionate attachment to her child, is described with a fidelity to the deeper and truer secrets of our nature which is as beautiful as it is unique. Among the members of j\Ir. Benson's congregation is a wealthy and influential merchant, ^Mr. Bradshaw, — the very distilled essence of a disagreeable Pliarisee ; osten- tatious, patronizing, self-confident, and self-worshipping ; rigidly righteous according to his own notion, but in our eyes a heinous and habitual offender ; a harsh and oppres- sive tyrant in his own family without perceiving it, or rather without admitting that his harshness and oppres- sion is other than a sublime virtue ; yet driving by it one child into rebellion and another into hypocrisy and crime, and arousing the angry passions of every one with whom he comes in contact ; having no notion of what tempta- tion is, either as a thing to be resisted or succumbed to, for the simple reason that all his temptations, which are those of pride, selfishness, and temper, are yielded to and defended as virtuous impulses ; prone to trample, and ignorant of the very meaning of tenderness and mercy. This man, reeking with the sins Christ most abhorred, turns upon the unhappy Euth (who, after six years of exemplary life, has become a governess in his house), as soon as he accidentally learns her history, with a brutal, savage violence and a coarse, unfeeling cruelty, which we need not scruple to affirm constituted a far greater sin than poor Euth had committed, or would have commit- ted had her lapse from chastity been wilful and persist- ent instead of unconscious, transient, and bitterly and nobly atoned for. Something of this very conviction was evidently in Mrs. Gaskell's mind ; and we can scarcely doubt that she placed Mr. Bradshaw's hard and aggressive Pharisaism in such strong relief and contrast by way of insinuating the comparative moral we have boldly stated. In any case, such is the resulting impression which must be left upon the reader's mind. But what we object to in her book is this : that the tone and lancuase habitually 114 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. adopted throughout, both by Ruth herself and by her friends when ulhiding to lier fault, is at war with this impression and with the true tenor of the facts recorded. Mrs. Gaskell scarcely seems at one with lierself in tliis matter. Anxious above all things to arouse a kinder feeling in the uncharitable and bitter world towards of- fenders of Euth's sort, to show how thoughtless and almost unconscious such offences sometimes are, and how slightly, after all, they may affect real purity of nature and piety of spirit, and liow truly they may be redeemed when treated with wisdom and with gentleness, — she has first imagined a character as pure, pious, and unselfish as poet ever fancied, and described a lapse from chastity as faultless as such a fault can be ; and then, with dam- aging and unfaithful inconsistency, has given in to the world's estimate in such matters, by assuming that the sin committed was of so deep a dye that only a life of atoning and enduring penitence could wipe it out. If she designed to awaken the world's compassion for the ordinary class of betrayed and deserted Magdalenes, the circumstances of Piuth's error should not have been made so innocent, nor should Euth herself have been painted as so perfect. If she intended to describe a saint (as she has done), she should not have held conventional and mysterious language about her as a grievous sinner. We have more to say upon this subject, for it is a M-ide and a very grave one ; but our space is exhausted, and we have probably drawn as largely as is wise upon our reader's attention. But the faulty religion, which dis- figures modern novels nearly as much as false morality, may perhaps tempt us to take up the subject once more on some other occasion. KIN"GSLEY AND CAELYLE. THERE are two living English writers who, wide as the poles asunder in many points, have yet several marked characteristics in common, and whom we confess to regarding with very similar sentiments, — Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Kingsley. Both are eminent ; botli are popular ; both have exercised, and are still exercising, a very imquestionable influence over their contempoi-aries : un- questionable, tliat is, as to degree ; questionable enougli, unhappily, as to kind. Of botli we have frequently liad occasion to speak with respect and admiration. We read them much, and recur to tliem often ; but seldom with- out mixed feelings, provocation, disappointment, and re- gret. We constantly lay them down outraged beyond endurance by their faults, and mentally forswearing them in future ; we as constantly take them up again in spite of vow and protest, drawn back into the turbid vortex by the force of their resistless fascinations. In short, we feel and act towards them as men may do towards women whom they at once delight in, admire, and con- demn ; who perpetually offend their purer taste and grate against their finer sensibilities, but whose noble qualities and whose meretricious charms are so strangely vivid and so marvellously blended, that they can shake themselves free from neither. For Mr. Kingsley we have long ago expressed our hearty appreciation ; but there is a time to appreciate, and a time to criticize. Standing as he now does* at the zenith of his popularity, it is the fit time to • I860. 110 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. spnak of his shortcomin;,'^ with that frankness Avhich is the truest respect. The historian of Frrdcrich the Great and the author of llijpiitiii have many ])oints of resemblance, hut always with a variation. Tliey are cast in the same mouhl, hut i'asliioned of dilferent clays and animated by different spirits. Both are terribly in earnest ; but Kingsley's is the earnestness of youthful vigor and a sanguine temper, C'arlyle's is the profound cynicism of a bitter and a gloomy spirit. He is, if not the saddest, assuredly the most sad- dening of writers, — the very Apostle of Despair. Both seem penetrated to the very core of their nature with the sharpest sense of the wrongs and sufferings of humanity; but the one is thereby driven to preach a crusade of ven- geance on their authors, the other a crusade of rescue and deliverance for their victims. ^Ir. Kingsley's earnest- ness as a social philosopher and reformer develops itself mainly in the direction of action and of sympathy ; Mr. Carlyle's exliales itself, for the most part, in a fierce con- tempt against folly and weakness, which is always un- measured and sometimes unchristian. The earnestness of Carlyle, though savagely sincere, never condescends enough to detail or to knowledge to make him a practi- cal reformer ; that of Kingsley is so restless as to allow liim no repose, and sends him rushing, tete haiss^e, at every visible evil or abuse. The one has stirred thou- sands to bitterest discontent with existing evils and social wrongs, but scarcely erected a finger-post or supplied a motive ; the other has roused numbers to buckle on their armor in a holy cause, but has often directed them astray, and has not always been careful either as to banner or to watchword. Both are fearfully pugnacious ; indeed, they are beyond comparison the two most combative writers of their age. Nature sent them into the world full of aggressive pro- pensities ; and strong principles, warm hearts, and expan- sive sympathies have enlisted these propensities on the side of benevolence and virtue. Happier than many, they have been able to indulge their passions in the cau :e KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 117 of right. But their success or good fortune in doing this has led them into tlie delusion common in such cases. They fancy that the cause consecrates the passion. They feel "We have come forth upon the field of life To war with Evil" ; and once satisfied that it is evil against M'hich they are contending, they let themselves go, and give full swing to all tlie vehemence of their imregenerate natures. We comprehend the full charms of such a tilt. It must be deliglitful to array all the energies of the old Adam against the foes of the new. What unspeakable relief and joy for a Christian like ]\Ir. Kingsley, wdiom God has made boiling over with animal eagerness and fierce aggressive instincts, to feel that he is not called upon to control these instincts, but only to direct them ; and that once having, or fancying that he has, in view a man or an institution that is God's enemy as well as his, he may hate it with a perfect hatred, and go at it en sahreur ! Accordingly he reminds us of nothing so much as of a war-horse panting for the battle ; his usual style is mar- vellously like a neigh, — a "ha! ha! among the trum- pets ! " the dust of the combat is to him the breath of life ; and when once, in the plenitude of grace and faith, fairly let loose upon his prey — human, moral, or mate- rial — all the Red Indian Avithin liim comes to the sur- face, and he wields his tomahawk with an unbaptized heartiness, slightly heathenish, no doubt, but withal un- speakably refresliing. It is amazing how hard one who is a gladiator by nature strikes when convinced that he is doing God service. Mr. Kingsley is a strange mixture of the spirit of the two covenants. He draws his sym- pathy with liuman wrongs mainly from tlie Xew Testa- ment ; but his mode of dealing M'ith human wrong-doers altogether from the Old. Mr. Carlyle borrows little from either division of the Bible; his onslaufjhts are like those of one of the Northern gods ; he wields Thor's hammer righteously in the main, but with a grim and terrible ferocity, and often mangles his victims as thougli abso- lutely intoxicated by the taste of blood. 118 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. Both writers — and this is one of their most serious offences — are contenijituous and abusive towards their adversaries far beyond the limits of taste, decency, or gentlemanly usage. Both indulge in terms of scorn and vituperation sucli as no cause can justify and no correct or Christian feeling could inspire. Their pages often read like the ])arngrai)hs in the Commination Service. Their holy wrath is poured out, as from teeming and exhaustless fountains, on everything they disapprove, and on every one who ventures to differ from them or to argue with them. Since the days of Dean Swift and Johnson there have been no such offenders among the literary men of England. Still, even here, there is a difference ; Mr. Carlyle slangs like a blaspheming pagan; Mr. Kingsley like a denouncing prophet. Mingled, too, with this unseemly fury, and piercing through all their unmeasured and lacerating language, there is discernible in both men a rich vein of beautiful and pathetic tenderness. This is most marked in Mr. Carlyle, as might be expected from his far deeper nature ; and if considered in connection with the irritations of an uncomfortable and nervous organization, goes far to explain, if not to excuse, his outrageous ferocity of utter- ance. It is as though, like the prophet of old, " he was mad for the sight of his eyes which he saw." Gloomy and phrenetic by temperament ; full of enthusiasm for what is noble ; keen in his perce])tions of what ought to be and might be ; bitterly conscious of the contrast with what is ; sympatliizing with almost painful vividness in the sufferings of the unhappy and the wronged, but per- versely showing that sympathy rather by contemy)tuous anger than by relieving gentleness ; richly endowed with warm human affections, which yet he is half ashamed of, and would fain conceal ; little accustomed to control himself, and never taught to respect others, — his spirit is in a perpetual state both of internecine and of foreign ■war ; and his tenderness, instead of being like oil upon the troubled waters, seems to be only one more incon- gruous and fermenting element cast into the seething KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 119 caldron. But whenever he Avill let it baam out un- checked, it not only spreads a rare sunshine over his pages, but communicates at once elevation and sobriety of tone. It is this which makes his Life of Sterling far the most pleasant as well as one of the truest of his books. ]\ir. Ivingsley's tenderness is of a diiferent order. Like all his excellences and defects, it springs from his physi- cal temperament ; and is therefore manly, prompt, and genuine, but not profound. Indeed, we think the special peculiarity of ]\Ir. Kingsley's nature, as of his genius, is that it wants depth. It is as sound as a bell, thoroughly healthy, indescribably vigorous ; but, if we must speak our thought, a little superlicial. Perhaps it is too healthy to be deep. Still it is very pleasant, because so bub- bling, lively, and sincere. We will quote one passage in illustration: it is rather long; but, as we do not intend to quote much, and as it is in his best manner, we will transfer it to our pages. "Was there no poetry in these Puritans, because they wrote no poetry 1 We do not mean now the unwritten trage- dy of the battle-psalm and the charge ; but simple idyllic poe- try and quiet house-drama, love-poetry of the heart and hearth, and the beauties of every-day human life. Take tlie most commonplace of them : was Zeal-for-Truth Thoresby, of Thoresby Rise in Deeping Fen, because his father had thought fit to give him an ugly and silly name, the less of a noble lad ? Did his name prevent his being six feet high 1 Were his shoulders the less broad for it ; his cheeks the less ruddy for it ] He wore his flaxen hair of the same length that every one now wears theirs, instead of letting it hang half-way to his waist in essenced curls ; but was he there- fore the less of a true Viking's son, bold-hearted as his sea- roving ancestors, who won the Danelagh by Canute's side, an I settled there ou Thoresby Rise, to grow wheat and bree I horses, generation succeeding generation, in the old moated grange] He carried a Bible in his jack-boot ; but did that prevent him, as Oliver rode past him with an approving smile ou Naseby field, thinking himself a very handsome fel- low, with his mustache and imperial, and bright red coat, 120 LITEllAllY AND KOCIAL JUDGMENTS. and cuirass well polished, in spite of many a dint, as he sat his father's great hlack horse as gracefully and firmly as any long-locked and csscnccd cavalier in front of him ] Or did it ])revcnt him thinking, too, for a moment, with a throb of the heart, that sweet Cousin Patience far away at home, could she but see him, might have the same opinion of him as he had of himself? Was he the worse for the thought? Pie was certainly not the worse for checking it the next instant, with manly shame for letting such ' carnal vanities ' rise in his heart while he was 'doing the Lord's work' in the teeth of death and hell : but was there no poetry in him then 'i No poetry in him, five minutes after, as the long rapier swung round his head, redder and redder at every sweep] We are befooled by names. Call him Crnsader instead of Roundhead, and he seems at once (granting him only sinceri- ty, which he had, and that of a right awful kind) as complete a knight-errant as ever svatched and prayed, ere putting on his spurs, in fantastic Gothic chapel, beneath 'storied win- dows richly dight.' Was there no poetry in him, either, half an hour afterwards, as he lay bleeding across the coi'pse of the gallant horse, waiting for his tnni with the surgeon, and fumbled for the Bible in his boot, and tried to hum a psalm, and thought of Cousin Patience, and his father and his moth- er ; and how they would hear, at least, that he had pla^-ed the man in Israel that day, and resisted unto blood, striving against sin and the Man of Sin ] And was there no poetry in him, too, as he came wearied along Thoresby dike, m the quiet autumn eve, home to the honse of his forefathers, and saw afar otf the knot of tall poplars rising over the broad misty flat, and the one great Abele tossing its sheets of silver in the dying gusts, and knew that they stood before his father's door 1 Who can tell all the pretty child-memories which flitted across his brain at that sight, and made him for- get that he was a wounded cripple ] . . . . And now he was going home to meet her (Patience) after a mighty victorv, a deliverance from Heaven, second only in his eyes to that Tied Sea one. Was there no poetry in his heart at that thought 1 Did not the glowing sr.nhet, and the reed-beds which it trans- figured before him into sheets of golden flame, seem tokens that the glory of Gud was going before him in his path 1 Did not the sweet clamor of the wild-fowl, gathering for one rich p»an ere they sank into rest, seem to him as God's bells KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. ■ 121 chiming him home in triumph with peals sweeter and bolder than tliose of Lincoln or Peterborough steeple-house ] Did not the very lapwing, as she tumbled softly wailing before his path, as she did years ago, seem to welcome the wanderer home in the name of Heaven ? " Fair Patience, too, though she was a Puritan, yet did not her cheek flush, her eye grow dim, like any other girl's, as she saw far off the red coat, like a sliding spark of fire, coming slowly along the strait fen-bank, and fled up stairs into her chamber to pi*ay, half that it might be, half that it might not be he ] Was there no happy storm of human ears and human laughter when he entered the court-yard gate ? Did not the old dog lick his Puritan hand as lovingly as if it had been a Cavalier's] Did not lads and lasses run out shouting'? Did not the old yeoman father hug him, weep over him, hold him at arm's length, and hug him again as heartily as any other John Bull, even though the next moment he called all to kneel down and thank Him who had sent his boy home again, after bestowing on him the grace to bind kings in chains, and nobles with links of iron, and contend to death for the fliith delivered to the saints 1 And did not Zeal-for- Truth look about as wistfully for Patience as any other man ■would have done, longing to see her, yet not daring even to ask for her 1 And when she came down at last, was she the less lovely in his eyes because she came, not flaunting with bare bosom, in tawdry finery and paint, but shrouded close in coif and pinner, hiding from all the world beauty which was there still, but was meant for one alone, and that only if God willed, in God's good time ] And was there no faltering of their voices, no light in their eyes, no trembling pressure of their hands, which said more and was more, ay and more beautiful in the sight of Him who made them, than all Her- rick's Dianemes, Wallers Saccharissas, flames, darts, posies, love-knots, anagrams, and the rest of the insincere cant of the court"? What if Zeal-for-Truth had never strung two rhymes together in his life 1 Did not his heart go for inspiration to a loftier Helicon, when it whispered to itself, ' My love, my dove, my undefiled, is but one,' than if he had filled pages with sonnets about Venuses and Cupids, love-sick shepherds and cruel nymphs ] " And was there no poetry, true idyllic poetry, as of Long- fellow's Evangeline itself, in that trip round the old farm next 6 122 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. morning, when Zeal-for-Truth, after looking over every heifer, and peeping into every sty, would needs canter down hy liis fa- ther's side to the horse-fen, with his arm in a sling ; while the partridges whirred before them, and the lurchers flashed like gray snakes after the hare, and the colts came whinnying round with staring eyes and streaming manes ; and the two chatted on in the same sober business-like English tone, alter- nately of ' the Lord's great dealings ' by General Cromwell, the pride of all honest fen-men, and the price of troop-horses at the next Horncastle fair ] " Poetry in those old Puritans 1 Why not 1 They were men of like passions with ourselves. They loved, they mar- ried, they brought up children ; they feared, they sinned, they sorrowed, they fought, they conquered. There was po- etry enough in them, be sure, though they acted it like men instead of singing it like birds." Again, both men are heartily and instinctively relig- ions ; yet both incessantly grate against the religious feelings of reverent Christians, though in a different manner, and from different causes. The one is full of rev- erence, but has no fixed or definite belief ; the other is orthodox enough in doctrine, but does not know what reverence means. The one has no creed ; the other has no doubt. Mr. Carlyle — as all deep and great spirits must — approaches the high mysteries of the Infinite and the Eternal with aM^e unspeakable, and almost with humility. He dares not even define the Illimitable Agencies ; he al- ways speaks of them in the plural number. You cannot tell what he means precisely when he whispers of the Si- lences and the Immensities, — probably he could not tell himself ; but there is no mistaking the natural tone and sentiment with which man refers to something su- premely and incomprehensibly above him. There may be no distinct Being for whom this awe is felt, but tJie awe is unquestionably there. In Mr. Kingsley there is nothing of all this. The great creative and pervading Spirit of the universe, who for Mr. Carlyle is r^tre Su- preme, for Mr. Kingsley is simply le hoii Dieu. He is not a stricken mortal, prostrate before the Ineffable In- telligence, l^ut a workman of God, a soldier of Christ, a KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 123 messenger who has got his orders from his immediate su- perior, and will execute them like a faithful laborer. He knows God's will, and it always harmonizes strangely with Mr. Kingsley's objects and opinions. He has an un- questioning obedience, cheerful service, boundless devo- tion, to his Father who is in heaven ; but of what we call reverence, — hushed and breathless adoration, solemn sense of infinite depth and infinite littleness, — we can perceive no trace whatever. He seems as unconscious as the infant Samuel of a superior Presence. His feelings towards God appear to hover between those of the negro and the Israelite, or rather to partake of both. He speaks of him, and to him, with the simple directness, the con- fiding but not disrespectful familiarity, now of Moses and now of Uncle Tom. When he issues his commands to the world of sinners, it is as though he had just come from an interview with the Most High on Sinai. "When he prays, it is (to use Mrs. Stowe's language) as though he knew God was listening behind the curtain. He is un- pleasantly fond of introducing the Great Xame on all occasions : it is always " God's work," " God's feasts," " God's heroes," " God's bells," " Good news of God " ; ex- pressions which, just and fitting enough when sparingly, solemnly, and appropriately used, produce almost a pro- fane effect by their incessant and uncalled-for recurrence ; appear to be dictated chiefly by an appetite for strong language operating on a gentleman in orders ; and are, in fact, we believe, Mr. Kingsley's way of swearing. There are further points of resemblance between tlie two men still. Eoaming through our world of compli- cated and corrupt civilization, laying about them with an iron flail, and smashing shams, follies, and abuses M'ith little mercy and less discrimination, they have yet both their weak places and their blind sides. Iconoclasts as they are, they are idolaters also, — and idolaters of the worst sort, and at tlie coarsest shrine. These teachers of mankind in an age of advanced science and refinement, trained in the highest culture, rich in the noblest endow- ments, — " These, the heirs of all the ages, in the foremost liles of time," — 12i LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. Morship imich as the barLarians of old did, and much as tlu! sava^^cs do now, and lull ]»rostrate before brute Force and a tyrannous and. unrelenting Will. They arc " Ti- tanolaters," as Archdeacon Hare appropriately named them. Mr. Carlyle raves about "Jarls"and "Vikings," and the " grand old Norsemen," till we are sick of the recurring cant; and Mr. Kingsley echoes his precise phrases and expressions, page after page, with an almost l)arrot-like exactitude of iteration. This idolatry of mere strength, however, assumes distinct forms in the two writers ; and, strange to say, it takes a somewhat higher type in the Pagan than in the Christian votary. The one idolizes chiefly strength of purpose,' the other chiefly strength of muscle and of nerve. Both probably have " gone in " for their own especial line of superiority. ^Mr. Carlyle — never strong in health or agile in frame, nor trained either as ploughman, sportsman, soldier, or athlete, but having had to fight his way in life with a persistent energy and a self-denying power which do him infinite honor — thinks little of mere bodily strength, and, indeed, seldom speaks of the animal fraiiie at all, but feels an irresistible attraction towards inflexible tempers and over- mastering volitions. Indeed, he is essentially and con- sistently a despot ; and with all despots, if only they be relentless and inconsiderate enough, he has a prompt and abounding sympathy. If they be utterly brutal in addi- tion, there are no limits to his admiration. His heart yearns to them, and leaps up to meet them as to a brother. He calls them " men," " true men," " types of real man- hood." No one acquainted with jMr. Carl}le's v.ritiiigs will, we are sure, charge us with one shade of exaggera- tion. Every book, and almost every page, will witness for us. The fierce rough Danton was among his earliest idols, bloody and ignorant as he was, because he wa^3 simple and earnest, kncNV what he wanted (or thought he did), and went \\'ith Juggernaut directness and reckless- ness to his end. Samuel Johnson too — noble old bear that he was — Mr. Carlyle really loves for his unendur- able brutality. But it was not till he met Mith Freder- KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 125 ick William of Prussia, — probably the most truculent ruffian that ever sat upon a modern throne ; an absolute savage in taste and temper ; often half mad, and con- stantly quite drunk ; forever and in every relation of life trampling upon justice, decency, kindness, and nat- ural affection, — that Mr. Carlyle recognized the " real- ized ideal " of his fancy, and hugged the "just man made perfect " to his heart of hearts. But ]\Ir. Carlyle not only worships " forcible " men ; he would apply force — physical force — to all recalcitrants ; he would govern the world by force. The wise and power- ful must rule ; the ignorant and foolish must submit. The scourge and the sword must carry out the dicta which Mr. Carlyle sees to be good. The negro must be flogged into sugar-making ; the wandering and misguided multi- tudes of all lands must be "regimented" under " captains of industry," who will co7n.pcl them to their task. The same offensive disregard of the rights of individual humanity, the same contempt for freedom, the same exag- geration of its mischiefs, the same denial or unconscious- ness of its benefits, runs through his works, and mars the beauty and the value of them all. Truly, the despots of the world — whether priests, legitimate tyrants, or mili- tary usurpers — never before among literary celebrities had an apologist or an adorer like the philosopher of Chelsea. ]Mr. Kingsley's idolatry of power shows itself in a differ- ent fashion, prompted no doul)t by his different organiza- tion, and somewhat more befitting his clerical profession. He himself is endowed by nature with a vigorous and exuberant organization, is a sportsman, a *fox-hunter, an athlete, and would probably have been a gladiator if he had not been a Christian. He revels in the description of every species of athletic exercise and desperate strife. Accordingly all his heroes are men of surpassing animal strength, all bone and muscle, marvels of agility, boiling over with exulting and abounding life, and usually mira- cles of physical beauty likewise. They are constantly " models " ; and very often " young Antinouses," or 12G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. " Plicabus Apollos." He loves above all things to paint, and to disjtlay in action liis ideal of the perfect " animal man." Softness and feebleness he cannot abide. The perpetual moral of his writings, -wliicli crops out at every sentence, is the old sentiment, — ' ' To bf! weak is miserable, Doing 01- .sun'eiing." He does not, like ]Mr. Carlyle, bow down in reverence before Miglit when utterly divorced irom Eight. But it is impossible not to perceive that admiration for what is strong as strong, is about his most vivid original in- stinct. With all his Christian feelings, his varnish of modern ci\ilization, his noble aspirations, and all the intense philanthropies of his heart, Mr. Kingsley, beneath the skin, is something of a Goth, a pagan, and a school- boy still. Finally, and not to weary our readers further with this prolonged parallel between the two most picturesque and graphic writers of the day, one other guilty similarity remains to be denounced. Both are declaimers, — not reasoners. Their declamation is always powerful, often splendid ; rich witii gorgeous imagery ; full of lightning gleams — sometimes lengthening out into steady rays — of grand and saving truths ; frequently, usually perhaps, flashing forth in the cause of humanity and right ; often striking the real offender and the real sin, often proclaim- ing the true hero and extolling the true virtue ; magnifi- cent in its wrath, withering in its scorn : but, after all, only declamation. Neither writer ever reasons, in the strict sense of the term. Inspiration supersedes all neces- sity for the siow and cautious processes by which con- scientious mortals of the ordinary stamp must painiully work out truth and light ; and both ]\Ir. Carlyle and ]Mr. Kingsley believe themselves inspired. The industrious collection and collation of jiremises, the careful elal)ora- tion of conclusions, are beneath them. They despise the inductive process.* Mr. Carlyle hates facts"; Mr. Kings- * It is a cxn-ious exemi-lifioation, that ilr. Kingslev has put forth a volume treating of some of the most knotty and awful questions that KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE, 127 ley hates logic. The hatred of both breaks out on all occasions. Tlieir opinions on subjects, their judgments of men, are not formed by reflection, but dictated by sentiment ; and therefore the lirst are constantly unsound, and the second constantly unjust. What they like, what fits into their temperament, tliat they believe, and tliat they praise. What they, dislike, what grates upon their tastes, that they repudiate and denounce. Their abhor- rence of reasoning is heightened by a further peculiarity common to the two. They are singularly imjKitient men. They are too impatient to observe and inquire ; too im- patient to perpend and reflect ; too impatient to entertain doubts and resolve them. They are not ruminating animals ; they do not chew the cud of thought. They pounce njjoii ideas, catch bright glimpses of them, have them written on their souls as by a flash of -light, shoot them flying, wake in the morning and find them there ; — but never create, educe, mould, revolve them. The inevitable consequence of this is, that both men, to a degree wholly unworthy of cultured intellects, are at the mercy of their sympathies and tlieir antipathies. You cannot have better awakeners, nor worse guides. We might cite a thousand illustrations, but two will suf- fice. Take the treatment which political economy and its votaries receive at their hands. Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Kingsley — the latter especially — are deeply impressed with the wretched condition of mankind in these islands, and with the vast and irresistible influence which their material well or ill being has upon their moral state. In his Miscellanies* Mr. Kingsley states his views on this subject with a breadth and daring whicli are astounding in a clergyman, but with which we almost unreservedly agree. To make men virtuous, he everywhere proclaims, you must first rescue them from their physical misery. Now, political economy is the science which treats of man's material well-being. It deals with causes, not with can occupy the human mind under the perfectly accurate title of Loose Tliouglits for Loose Thinkers. * 11. pp. 332-334. 128 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. symptoms. Discarding the shallow charity which relieves sufiering as it arises, and perpetuates and multiplies it by relieving it, political economy searches out and ex- ])lains the sources of that suffering, and the only recipe fpr its radical and enduring cure. Eschewing and de- nouncing the assistance from without, which degrades the laborer, it studies and preaclies that knowledge and self-control whicli elevates and strengtliens while it enriches him. Knowing that . competence is essential (among the masses at least) to virtue and to progress, its task is to discover and proclaim how that competence is to be won. It is, in a single word, the Science of Philan- thropy. Its business is to show how, and how only, Mr. Kingsley's object may be attained. Surely the professors of such a science ought to be recognized and welcomed by him as fellow-laborers. He may think their principles at fault ; he may think their rules too rigid ; lie may think their purpose and their means too narrow ; but at least he must see tliat they are doing his work, and aiming at his end. But no ; they are exact thinkers, and ]\Ir. Kingsley hates the fet- ters of exactitude. They are logicians, and believe in logic ; Mr. Kingsley neither has it, nor has faith in it. They are often dry, stern,- and methodical, while Mr. Kingsley is impetuous, enthusiastic, and sentimental ; and, in these matters at least, he can endure no man wlio does not wear his livery, speak his language, and go his way. Therefore he denounces them in terms quite as violent, and almost as indecent as Mr. Carlyle. Yet they are both acquainted with economists — with one at least, and he perhaps the chief, whose compassion for the Avretched and the astray is as vivid and as genuine as their own, and has often tried hard his allegiance to souVid doctrine and scientific truth, and more than once, in cur judgment, found it wanting. "Unheeding all this, how- ever, and never pausing to master the science they detest, or to respect the thinker whom they know, they have niade political economy from the first, and make it still, the object of their fiercest anathemas. KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. ' 129 We need not encumber our pages with the sarcasms which disfigure nearly all Mr. Carlyle's writings against the " professors of the Dismal Science," " the GosjjcI ac- cording to M'Crowdy," and the like : * nor should we be disposed to remind our readers of the very unseemly and indefensible language used on the subject by Mr. Kings- ley in Cheap Clothes and Nasty, and in Alton Locke (of which we hoped and believed that he had long ago be- come ashamed), were it not that in his Miscellanies, published only yesterday, we came upon a passage in his old manner, which proves too clearly that the shame has been ineffectual, and that the repentance is, to say the least, incomplete. At present Mr. Kingsley is wild about sanitary reform ; so are we. Well, then, remem- bering who was the chief originator, and unwearied, if not unwearying, advocate of that great movement, how could he dare to pen and publish this heartless sneer ? " Others again expected, with equal wisdom, the assistance of the political economist [in the work of sanitary reform]. The fact is undeniable, but at the same time inexplicable. What they could have found in the doctrines of most modern political economists which should lead them to believe tliat human life would he precious in their eyes is unknown to the writer of these pages. Those whose bugbear has been over- population, whose motto has been a euphuistic version of " The more the merrier, the fewer the better fare," cannot he expected to lend their aid in increasing the popiila- tion by saving the lives of tivo-thirds of the children ivho now die prematurely in our great cities, and so still further over- crowding this unhappy land with those helpless and expen- sive sources of national poverty, — rational human beings in strength and health." f * See Past and Present, Chartism, and Latter-Day Pamphlets, pas- sim. t In justice to ourselves, and as a specimen of Mr. Kingsley's style when he comes across his foes, we must give the rest of the })assage, though we confess to a feeling almost of disgust as we transcribe his random irony. " By political economy alone has this faculty [progress and invention] been denied to man. In it alone he is not to conquer Nature, but 6* I 130 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. It is as useless to argue with Mr. Kingsley when he takes up liis paraljlc against economic science, as M'itli Sir A. Alison when he opens out about the currency. ])Ut passing over the unscrupulousness of the ahove on- slauglit, we cannot lielp ohserving tliat a little reading or a little thought might have shown ]\Ir. Kingslty its I'al- sity as well. Does he not know that human lil'e is ]ire- cious in the eyes of political economists ; not perhaps for the same considerations as with him, but precisely because they are wise reasoners and sound calculators ? Is he not aware that they deplore that sacrifice of youth- ful life caused by a neglect of sanitary laws, because it is wasteful as well as cruel ? They long ago exphiined and remonstrated against the folly and extravagance of these inchoate and incomplete existences ; they repeat- edly and seriousl}'' called attention to the fact that, to take no higher ground, — for, be it remembered, in their 2)7'ofcssion they are men of science, and not moralists, — every child that was not reared to manhood was a drain upon the national wealth, a source of uniepaid expendi- ture, an investment of toil and money which yielded no simply to obey hor. Let her starve him, make him a slave, a haiikrnpt, or what not, he must submit, as the savage does to the hail and the lightnin<(. 'Laissez-faire,' says tlie 'science du neant,' — the 'science de la misire,' as it has truly and bitterly been called, — ' laisscz-faire.' Analyze economic questions if you will, but beyond analysis you shall not step. Any attempt to raise political economy to its .synthetic stage is to break the laws of nature, to light against facts ; as if facts were not made to be fought against and conquered and put out of the tcay, uhenso- evcr they interfere in the least with the welfare of any human being. [Strange jumble and confu.sion between facts and truths, principles and laws.] The drowning man is not to strike out for his life, lest by keep- ing his head above water he interferes with the laws of gravitation, ^'ot that the political economist, or any man, can be true to his own fallacy. He must needs tiy his hand at the synthetic method, though he forbids it to the rest of the world. But the only deductive hint which he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly enough, the most unnatural ' eidolon speciis ' which ever entered into the head of a dehumanii'ed pedant, — name'y, that once famous 'preventive check,' which — if ever a nation did apply it, as it never will — could issue, as every doctor knows, in nothing less than the questionable habits of abortion, child- murder, and unnatural crime." — Miscellanies, I. 116. It is diliicult to .say whether the rattling nonsense or the unseemly in- sinuations of tliis passage aie the more repellent. KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 131 return, — a consumer only, and a producer never. They condemned the costly folly of letting children die before they reached the laboring and remunerating age (or bring- ing them into the world so that they must so die), on the same principles as they would condemn the analogous insanity of trampling down your green corn, or building- houses and then letting them fall to pieces before yuu finished them ; hecixuse, from the point of view at which they were then dealing vjitli the subject, the cases were alike, inasmuch as both were idle and wasteful preparations for a result that was never to arrive, — planting a tree that was never to bear fruit. In technical language, both were instances of " unproductive expenditure." The same servitude to impressions and antipathies which makes Mr. Kingsley so unjust to nnwelcome doc- trines, makes liim also unjust to alien men. We cannot have a better -illustration than his comments on Shelley and Byron, republished in his Miscellanies (I. p. 310). His attack upon the former seems to us utterly unwar- rantable. Byron, amid all his fearful sins, was a " man " :' he was gifted with indomitable energy and courage ; he excelled in all bodily exercises of which his lameness al- lowed him to partake, — he swam, boxed, rode, shot, to perfection ; was vehement, impetuous, daring, and above all, combative ; a child of impulses, many of them noljle and sane, all of them natural and vigorous : and there- fore he was, except in his excesses and his sins, a man after Mr. Kingsley's own heart. Though his nature was intensely worldly, Byron too was, or fancied himself, a sort of Christian ; while Shelley, whose nature was es- sentially, though waywardly, religious, was, and pro- claimed himself, an unlieliever. Poor Shelley — gentle, tender, ethereal, and aspiring, solder and abstemious, a pale student, an abstract and highly metaphysical thinker, delicate as a woman in his organization, sensi- tive as a woman in his sympathies, loathing all that was coarse and low with a woman's shrinking, detesting all field-sports as barbarous and brutal — presented a phase of humanity utterly alien to the rampant and " healthy 132 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. aniinalism " of Mr. Kingslcy's nature. In oaily^ lil'e Shelley, habitually the purest and least sensual of men, coniinitted one grievous fault, so far as we can judge, less at the instigation of wrong passions than under the de- lusion of a false "theory. In early life, too, when wild iind flighty. almost to the verge of insanity, if not some- times beyond it, when smarting under l)itter wrongs, en- thusiastic for the regeneration of the M-orld, burning with boyish zeal for the destruction of what he held to be a mis- chievous and tyrannical delusion, and full of the self-opin- ion which belongs to youth, and not unfrequently survives it, — he poured forth mad anathemas against Christianity and social law. It availed nothing that he denounced un- natural and ascetic priests with a pertinacious eloquence akin to Mr. Kingsley's own ; that his purse, his time, his strength, were always at the call of the suffering and the sad ; that his blood boiled as fiercely as that of the strong- est at the bare idea of injustice and oppression, and that in such a cause he was as brave as a lion, and would take any odds ; that he exercised over the coarser mind of Byron a strange -influence which, if not intellectually wholesome, was always morally improving ; and that he even persuaded him to abstain from continuing his profli- gate poem ; — all this goes for nothing ; the one poet was sympathetic, the other antipathic to Mr. Kingsley's tastes ; and accordingly, Shelley, whose life, we believe (except in the one instance referred to) Avas strictly chaste, and whose pages are as pure as Mr. Kingsley's own, — for he, like Shelley, sometimes errs iu saying things better left unsaid, and like Shelley, too, errs from mistaken theory, and not from wrong design, — Shelley is "lewd" and a " satyr." " Byron may be brutal, but he never cants"; — "if Byron sinned more desperately and more flagrantly, it was done under the temptations of rank, wealth, disappointed love, and the impulses of an animal nature, to which' Shelley's passions were ' As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.' " To Shelley, therefore, is attributed " the lewdness of the KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 133 gentle and sensitive vegetarian " ; and Byron is " the sturdy peer, proud of his bidl neck and his boxing, who kept bears and bull-dogs, and drilled Greek ruffians at Missolonghi, and 'had no objection to a pot of beer'; and who might, if he had been reformed, have made a gallant English gentleman: while Shelley, if once his intense self-opinion had deserted him, would probably have ended in Eome as an Oratorian or a Passionist." * A more characteristic passage — one more richly redo- lent of unregenerate Kingsleianism — itwould.be diffi- cult to find. It suggests, too, another criticism we have to make upon our author, — the close connection, namely, of his greatest merits and his greatest faults with the intensely social character of his mind. His test, not only of good and evil, but of truth and falsehood, may be said to be the tendency of actions or doctrines to dissolve the bonds of social unity, or to draw them closer. This per- haps lies at the root of his dislike to political economy. Competition — which political economy recognizes as the law of trade — he sees, truly enough, to be the source of much selfishness, many jealousies, and occasionally of bitter animosities and heart-burnings ; and hence he tries to sweep the whole system away with the strong wind of religious faith. His deep respect for sanitary laws, for bodily exercises, for field-sports, is in a great measure due to the connection of these things with social health, and the effect they have in clearing away the secret mor- bidness of exclusive temperaments, and oj^ening the com- munications between mind_ and mind. He knows well that there is scarcely any root of exclusiveness, of moral cowardice, of self-involvement, of social blight, so com- * It is singular that, a few pages further on, we find Mr. Kingsley speaking of Shelley in almost the precise terms in which we have spoken of himself: "Whether it be vegetarianism or liberty, the rule [with Shelley] is practically the same, ■ — sentiment ; which in this case, as in the case of all sentimentalists, turns out to mean at last, not the sentiments of mankind in general, but the private sentiments of the writer. This is Shelley ; a sentimentalist pure and simple ; incapable of anything like inductive reasoning, unable to take cognizance cf any facts but those which please his taste, or to draw any conclusion from them but such as also pleases his taste" (p. 314). 1.11 LITrJiAUY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. inon as the ne<];lect of jiliysical liealtli and exercise ; and lie is aware, too, that tlic; social and buoyant tone of his own ("hristiaiiity al•is(^s in a f^i'cat measure from his ItuihHii^L,' it u]) on a sound Ibundation of })l)ysical health. 'J'iierc are evidently few tilings he liates so much as the morbid fancifulness of solitary and sedentary minds. But this social test of right and truth, sound enough as far as it goes, is, more consudo, so exaggerated by ]Mr. Kingsley tliat it often brings out very false results. It is true that there must be a seed of error and of poison in any mind,- or in any system of belief, which leads per- manently to isolation, narrowness, and frigid self-suffi- ciency. But it is not true — as Mr. King.sley thinks — that the characteristic sins of social temperaments are loss heinous or less dangerous than the characteristic sins of solitary temperaments ; nor even that convictions ^vhich force time may seem to sever men from their fel- low-creatures, and to remove them painfully from human sympathy, are less true than those which give an imme- diate and commanding hold of the popular mind. Now Mr. Kingsley falls into both these errors. In that essay on Shelley and Byron to which we have just referred, the man of social temperament, of unbridled passions, and of unbridled selfishness, is contrasted with a man whose complex, benevolent, sensitive, but in several points unhealthy, spirit was of such a kind that few could understand him fully, and few were fully under- stood by him. That the one was morbid, and the other manly, we do not deny ; but we cannot conceive how any just-minded moralist, who judged by a true test — or, intlced, by any standard at all other than his own self-will and predilections — could compare Byron with Slielley, and feel inclined to give judgment in favor of the hardy reprobate over the gentle and aspiring enthu- siast. But what j\Ir. Kingsley feels so strongly is, that Byron's sins against the social bond, though deep and gross, were open and easily exposed ; Shelley's lil'e and ])oetry, on the other hand, he thiidvs likely to fascinate men with an appearance of beauty and nobility which KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 135 will end in eating out the manliness of their life and the heart of their faith. It is possible enough, perhaps, that a Slielley school of thought — though not half so likely to become prevalent — might, if prevalent, be more evil in its influences than a Byronic school, because it would be a more complex and subtle combination of noble sen- timents with emotional self-indulgence. But what right have we, in comparing the two men, to judge them by the probable effects upon society of their characteristic faults ? The fact remains, that Shelley — though afflicted with a morbid and unsocial nature, which, however, he did much to elevate and purify — was _ self-controlled, benevolent, dignified, courageously true, and compara- tively pure in life ; while Byron was selfish, sensual, cov- etous of fame, not above dissimulation, and without the power of mastering himself. Yet the Christian minister prefers the strong fast sinner to the erroneous and anti- pathic thinker. But IVIr. Kingsley not only makes social influence a test of good and evil ; he too much inclines to make it a test of Tridh also. In the dialogue of PhactJion — a book, by the way, which if a man wishes to fill his belly with tlie east wind (as Solomon says), he had better read to-morrow — he is not ashamed to assert that a man who has reached what he is convinced is positive truth, should suppress the expression of that conviction if it seems to be in conflict with (what Mr. Kingsley, we suppose, deems to be) the more happy and useful belief of society at large. The atheist, we are told, even if moved by the " Spirit of Truth," is bound to conceal his unbelief ; — " for there would be far more chance that he alone was wnnig, and the many right, than that the many were wrong, and he alone right. He would, therefore, commit an inso- lent and conceited action, and moreover a cruel and shame- less one ; for he would certainly make miserable, were he believed, the hearts of many virtuous persons who had never harmed him, for no iu:imediate or demonstrable purpose ex- cept that of pleasing his own self-will" (p. 41). This is perhaps the worst instance to be found in Mr. 13G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. Kingsley's writings of his undiscriminating worship ( t' the social bond. If he had given himself time to tliink; or had asked any reasoning friend to think for him, he would scarcely have pul)lished such a passage; or, indeed, any ])ortion of the slipshod volume which contains it. No douht, ill the end, any creed must be false, or must contain a large element of error, wliich tends to drive men asunder; and all true faith ought ultimately to draw them into closer union and harmony. But this is not, and cannot be, our main test of their truth ; and those who make it so commit exactly the same- mistake as the utilitarian moralist, who judges of moral actions only by their consequences. Deep conviction is the sole sine qua lion of the duty of public expression. Of course, no man is bound, and no man has a right, to throw forth to tha world his crude, hasty, passing notions on serious sub- jects, especially if those notions are likely to prove per- turbing or offensive, and if he has not qualified himself by years, by study, by patient inquiry, and by modest reflec- tion, to form and to propound independent opinions : and Mr. Kingsley might take this lesson home. , But the ma- ture convictions of mature minds are the great instru- ments of social progress and purification : all who read history know them to be so ; all who believe in God should feel them to be so likewise, and should beware lest, out of mere timid unfaithfulness of soul, they "quench the Spirit," and fight against the suggestions of the Most High. As in the few pages which remain of our allotted space we shall address our criticisms to Mr. Kingsley alone, we should be sorry to leave our readers under the impression that what we have said of his analogue, Mr. Carlyle, com- prises our whole opinion of that eminent man, or at all faithfully conveys the sentiments with which we regard him. We have spoken of his faults freely and severely ; and we have nothing more to add on that score. But Mr. Carlyle is a man to be spoken of with respect, even where we cannot speak of him with patience. The pres- KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 137 ent age owes to few a deeper debt of gratitude. He has infused into it something of his own uncompromising earnestness. He has preached up the duty and the dignity of Work, with an eloquence which has often made the idle shake off their idleness, and the frivolous feel ashamed of their frivolity. He has proclaimed, in tones that have stirred many hearts, that in toil, however humble, if hon- est and hearty, lie our true worth and felicity here below. "Blessed is the man who has found his work,'' he some- where says : " let him ask no other blessedness." He lias inspired in 6thers something of his own contempt fur animal indulgence, and for unproductive- and unaspiring ease. He is the most terrible scourge the fruges consn- mere nati ever had. For everything unreal and deceptive he has a keen eye and a withering denunciation. He has broken in pieces many hollow idols, and scattered to the winds many empty pretensions, many time-honored false- lioods, many half-held creeds. He has forced a conven- tional and shallow generation to test and try many things, and to abandon what lias clearly been found wanting. If he has built up little, he has destroyed much ; lie has prepared the way for future workmen by removing vast heaps of encumbering rubbish. On thinkers and on the young he has exercised an influence which has always been remarkable, and generally salutary ; and if he lias been usually scouted and neglected by statesmen and politicians, by the practical and the sober-minded, he owes it to his inveterate habit — in which again, by the way, Mr. Kingsley resembles him — of stating truth with such outrageous exaggeration that it looks like falsehood, and almost becomes such. "VYe have tw^o more criticisms to make on Mr. Kings- ley's writings, and both relate to very grave faults. AYith faculties equal to turning out work of almost any degree of excellence, his ordinary style of workmanship is slov- enly and slipshod. With power to reach almost any stand- ard, his ordinary standard is unfixed and low. He, Avho can do so well, is content often to do ill. We are sure that he 138 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. writes as ho thinks, hastily and inconsiderately. His rattling, random, f>alloi)ing, defiant style irresistibly con- veys the impression of a man of overflowinj^- mind coming in from a hreathless burst with the fox-hounds, rushing to his desk \vitli muddy boots, battered hat, and disor- dered dress, and dashing off with vast rapidity the teenjing fancies suggested to him by a brisk circulation and a fertile and vivid brain. He is essentially an im2)rovisatorc, — an extempore writer. His luxuriance is marvellous ; but he never 2)runes or tones it down. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, conscious of his own great gifts, he thinks that his loosest and most careless thoughts are good enough for the world. He wants respect for his readers, for his art, and for his own powers. He does not value the talent God has given him sufficiently to culti- vate it to its highest point of perfection, to dress it in the most fitting drapery, or to be on the watch against its straggling vagaries. He has none of the noble, artistic, old Greek thirst for perfection. He " goes in " for quan- tity rather than quality. Content with, and revelling in, a prolific exuberance that is almost unrivalled ; seeking to do much rather than to do well ; trusting to ins]iira- tion, and fancying (perhaps too easily) that whatever comes must be inspired, — he is forever falling below himself, and at once disappointing and irritating his ad- mirers. Now, a genius like Mr. Kingsley's not only de- serves the most sedulous culture, but demands the most severe control. It is too rich and teeming to be left to " wander at its own sweet will." It needs to be emi^loyecl, not to be indulged. A man has no more right to allow his powers to be less useful and profitable than they might be made, than he has to misuse or to neglect them altogether. If it be sinful to wrap your talent in a nap- kin and hide it in the earth, it is only one degree less sinful so to handle it as to make it yield twofold only where it might yield ten. We have said that Mr. Kingsley is essentially an im- jorovisatore. His novels especially bear the same relation to the best works of art, in their line, that the extempore KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 139 versification of an -abounding fancy bears to the con- scientiously perfected and polished production of a consummate poet. It is difficult to believe that, either in Hypatia or in Two Years Ago, he had laid his plot beforehand : in Yeast there does not preteud to be any plot at all. HyiKttia especially might have been so grand, and is so disappointiug. There is consummate mastery of the costume and character of the epoch ; there are magnificent materials of character and fancy brought together to the workshop ; there are gorgeous descriptions of external beauty; there are individual scenes of thrilling interest; there are wonderful glimpses both of thought and passion. Eaphael Aben Ezra's med- itations when he gets to the " bottom of the abyss " of scepticism, and poor Pelagia's piercing remonstrances against the prospect of being consigned to the flames of hell forever, are among the most powerful passages we have read in any language. But the inconsiderate confusion in which the incidents of the story jostle and stumble over one another, and the indistinctness with which many of them are told, compel us to reserve our admiration for particular scenes and portions, and render it impossible to praise the work as a whole. Mingled with our pleasure and our interest in reading it, and spoiling both, come the ever-recurring reflections, " How much more might have been made of this ! how much better this might have been done ! what a splendid conception, but what an un- worthy and slovenly maltreatment of it ! " Still, with all its faults, it is unquestionably a work of genius ; but of genius in a hurry, — of genius, as it were, shut up with- out fire or candle, like an inharmonious jury, and com- pelled to complete its task before it can regain its lil^erty. The general picture of those times is imperfect and con- fused enough, not from want of knowledge, but I'rom want of care and patience ; the view of the great strug- gle between Christianity and Paganism, when the latter was an etfete and dying unreality, and the former was inso- lent with rough young life and rampant with incipient victory, — which offered so magnificent a subject for a pen 140 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. competent to deal with it, — is in our opinion most inad- e(|ualely and mistily worked out; but, on the other hand, the extrava,uaiit iollies and tlie brutal vices of tlie Al- cxandi-ian Christians, as well as the narrow bigotry, questionable motives, and unscrupulous violence of their leaders, are drawn with a powerful and unsparing hand. Philammon, the young monk who goes forth to see the world, is interesting and natural ; so is the wily and cul- tivated J-ew, first a cynical philosopher, and then a con- vert to the new religion ; so also is Pelagia, tlie Athenian dancing-girl and courtesan, — frivolous, pleasure-loving, and childish, undeveloped and soulless because untaught, unconsciously sinful because brought up to sin, but still endowed with some original elements of good, and there- fore redeemable, and in the end redeemed. Hypatia, the beautiful teacher of a poetic philosophy and a poetic creed ; the beautiful dweller in a beautiful cloud-land ; the enthusiastic votary of the old gods of Greece; spot- less, ethereal, noble, but a dreamer ; vainly and Avildly striving to save and fan the flickering embers of a fading past, and to brighten and animate with her own vivid life the chill and pallid moonlight of the pagan faith, is grandly conceived and finely depicted. The other char- acters in the book seem to us either blotches or mere in ■ dicated outlines. The only extract we shall allow our- selves is the soliloquy of Pelagia, after she has been awakened by the denunciations and the pity of Philam- mon and Arsenius to the sinfulness of her life, and its reputed future issue : — " ' I cannot bear it ! Anything but shame ! To have fan- cied all my life — vain fool that I was! — that everyone loved and admired me ; and to find that they were despising me, hathig me, all along ! . . . . And yet women as bad as. I liave been honored, — when they were dead. What was that song I iised to sing about Epicharis, who hung herself in the litter, and Leaina, who bit out her tongue, lest torture should drive them to betray their lovers 1 There used to be a statue of Leaina, they say, at Athens, — a lioness without a tonsue And whenever I sang the song, the thcutie KIXGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 141 used to rise and shout, and call them noble and blessed I never could tell why then ; but I know now ! Perhaps the}^ may call me noble, after all. At least they may say, " She was a ; but she dared to die for the man she loved !".... Ay, but God despises me too and hates me. He will send me to eternal fire. Philammon said so, — though he was my brother. The old monk said so, though he wept as he said it The flames of hell for ever ! 0, not for ever ! Great, di'eadfal God ! not for ever ! In- deed, I did not know ! No one ever taught me about right and wrong ; and I never knew I had been baptized, — indeed I never knew ! And it was so pleasant, — so pleasant to b3 loved and praised and happy, and to see happy faces round me. How could I help it ] The birds who ai'e singing in the darling, beloved court, — they do what they like; and Thou art not angry with them for being happy. And Thou wilt not be more cruel to me than to them, great God, — for what did I know more than they 1 Thou hast made the beautifid sunshine, and the pleasant, pleasant world, and the flowers and the birds. Thou wilt not send me to burn for ever and ever ] will not a hundred years be punishment enough ] — or a thousand ? God, is not this punish- ment enough already, — to have to leave him just as — just as I am beginning to long to be good and to be worthy of him ] .... 0, have mercy, — mercy, — mercy, — and let me go after I have been punished enough ! Why may I not turn into a bird, or even into a worm, and come back again out of that horrible place, to see the sun shine and the flowers grow once more 1 0, am not I punishing myself already 1 Will not this help to atone 1 . . . . Yes, I will die! — and perhaps so God will pity me.' And with trem- bling hands she drew the sword from its sheath, and covered the blade with kisses. ' Yes, on this sword, — with which lie won his battles. That is right, — his to the last. AVill it be very painful 1 After all, it is his sword ; it will not have the heart to tortiu'e me much.' " IMany of the same remarks we have made on Hypatia Avill apply to Tuo Years Ago. To ns this appears the cleverest and the pleasantest of Mr. Kingsley's novels ; but it, like the rest, shows a singular absence of the artis- tic spirit. The plot is clumsy, and the winding-up and 142 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. conversion of Tom Thurnall slovenly in the extreme. No man with an eye to the perfection of his work would have interwoven the irrelevant episode of Stangrave and CordiHamma. It is entirely out of place, and is very in- terrupting. But Mr. Kingsley wanted to say his say about slavery and America; lie liad a fine conception in his head, and some striking thoughts ready at his pen ; so he thrust them in where they had no business, and spoiled one story by what would have afforded excellent materials for another. But the book is full of interest : Grace is charming, though unnatural ; Valencia charm- ing, because natural. Thomas Thurnall is a capital char- acter, though here and there degenerating into harsh caricature : a better picture was never drawn of the un- regenerate, good, natural man, — wild, reckless, worthy, and affectionate, — doing his duty, and doing well, nut from any conscientiousness or religious faith, but from a simple, ungodly, innate love of whatever is true, honest, fitting, right, and kindly ; self-confiding, bubbling over with animal vigor and animal spirits, very rough but very lovable. The poet too, — vain, selfish, shallow, and unregulated, but honorable and aspiring, — is well con- ceived, and is a real and complete conception. As with Hypatia, we say of this book, " What a pity that wdiat is so good should not have been better still ! " Before closing tliis paper, we have another of j\Ir. Kingsley's deficiencies to notice (their name is Legion, our readers will begin to think) ; and it is one somewhat difficult to handle, both from its nature and from its close connection with one of his most signal merits. Without intending it, — or it would be more correct to say, with- out being conscious of it, — he is not unfrequently coarse. We are aware that he would not admit the im- putation, and that he really believes himself to be inno- cent ; but on questions of this sort the common taste of cultivated men and women must decide. In his treat- ment of love and the relation between the sexes, while sometimes excellent, he is sometimes also needlessly venturesome and grating. The plain truth is (and we KINGSLEY AND CARLYLE. 143 may as well speak out), that his theory on this and cog- nate subjects, though we incline to think it sound, is one which can only be acted upon safely by writers whose courage and whose feelings are under the guidance of the most sensitively correct taste. He likes to call things by their plain names ; a fancy with which, in modera- tion, we sympathize. He thinks, further, that in treat- ing of the various questions arising out of the relations between the sexes, we lose much and risk much by a mischievous reticence and a false and excessive delicacy ; and in this opinion also we agree with him. But in ref- erence to both these peculiarities, his rampancy and dar- ing make him a dangerous ally. He rides so near the boundary, that you are in perpetual uneasiness lest he should pass it. His view of love is, we think, true, chaste, and noble ; and much needs to be asserted and upheld. Macaulay somewhere says of Southey, tliat he had no conception of genuine human love, " that all his lieroes made love like seraphim or like cattle." Mr. Kingsley's heroes avoid both extremes ; he proclaims — with a courage which, in a clergyman especially, is above all praise — the rights of nature, and the intrinsic purity of natural instincts ; he blends, more than any writer we know, the warmth with the nobility of passion, and is resolutely bent on showing that the most passionate love may also be the purest, if only it be legitimate in its cir- cumstances and worthy in its object. He seems to have almost grasped the grand cardinal truth, that the real guilt lies not in mingling the gratification of passion with the sentiment* of love, but in ever for one moment per- mitting the former save under the guidance and sanction of the latter. But here again that predominant appreci- ation of i\\Q physical, which we have already commented upon, is unpleasantly manifest ; the Sainfs Tvagedy contains passages which the more sensitive taste of Mr. Kingsley's friend and Mentor * would have omitted ; and in other of his stories, what we may call the " animal magnetism " of love, in distinction to its finer sentiment, * See the Preface, by Mr. Maurice. 14-t LITEUAKY AXD SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. is made too much of, and brought too pioniiuently for- ward. The heroines are too sensitive to tlie influence of h)()k and toucli ; the lieroes win them rather by mesmer- ism than by courtship. Thei-e is an undoubted element of fact in all this ; but whether it be wise to paint it so strongly, or to dwell on it so much, may well be questioned. For the fierce denunciation with which Mr. Kingsley assails the brutal ascetics of former times and their puny imitators in our own days, we tender him our most cor- dial gratitude and admiration. lie hates them with a truly holy hatred. Asceticism is the form which religion takes in sensual minds, and in those weaker spirits over whom sensualists sometimes exercise so fatal and degrad- ing a supremacy. When we think of the holy joys that •have been poisoned, of the healthy souls that have been diseased, of the fine natures that have been made coarse, of happy lives embittered and bright lives darkened, of noble niiuds overset and pure minds soiled, by the foul fancies and the false doctrines which these men have in- vented to trample upon nature and to outrage all its sweet humanities, we feel that no terms of wrath or con- demnation can be too unmeasured to apply to them. The strength and justice of Mr. Kingsley's sentiments on this subject would incline us perhaps too readily to pardon the coarseness observable in the Sainfs Tragedy and in iri/patia, were they really necessary for the purpose he has in view, which we do not think they are. We have spoken freely and without stint of Mr. Kings- ley's erroi-s and offences, because he is strong and can bear it well ; because he is somewhat pachydermatous, and will not feel it nmch ; because it is well for a man who habitually speaks of others in such outrageous terms, to have his own measure occasionally meted out to him in return; because, also, one wiio sins against so much light and knowledge deserves to be beaten with many stripes ; and because, finally, on a previous occasion we did such ample justice to his merits. But we should grieve to have it believed that we are insensible to his remarkable and varied excellences, or to part from him KIXGSLEY AXD CARLYLE. 145 otherwise than in a spirit of thorough and cordial appre- ciation. In spite of much that is rant, and of mucli that would be twaddle if it were not so energetic, there is such wonderful go in him, such exulting and abounding vigor, and he carries you along with a careering and facile rapidity which, while it j^uts you out of breath, is yet so strangely exhilarating, that old and young iiever fail to find pleas- lU'e in his pages. He may often wander, but he never sleeps. He has, however, far higher claims on our ad- miration than any arising from these merely literary merits. And in an age like this, of vehement desires and feeble wills, of so much conventionalism and so little courage, — when our favorite virtue is indulgence to oth- ers, and our commonest vice is indulgence to self, — when few things are heartily loved, and fewer still are heart- ily believed, — when we are slaves to what others think, and wish, and do, slaves to past creeds in which we have no longer faith, slaves to past habits in which we have no longer pleasure, slaves to past phrases from which all tlie meaning has died out, — when the ablest and tenderest minds are afraid to think deeply because they know not where deep tliought might land them, and are afraid to act thoroughly because they shrink from what thorough action miglit entail, — when too many lead a life of conscious unworthiness and unreality, because surrounded by evils with which they dare not grapple, and by darkness which they dare not pierce ; — in such an age, amid such wants and such shortcomings, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to a crusader like Mr. Kingsley, whose faith is undoubting, and whose courage is imflinch- ing; who neither fears others nor mistrusts himself; who hates with a destructive and aggressive animosity wliat- ever is evil, mean, filthy, weak, hollow, and untrue ; who has drawn his sword and girded up his loins for a work which cannot be passed by, and which must not be negli- gently done ; whose practice himself, and whose exhorta- tion to others, is, in the words of the great German, — " Im halben zu entwcihnen, Im ganzen, guten, ■\vahrun, resolut zu leben." 7 J FEENCH FICTION" : THE LOWEST DEEP. It is hard to say whether the current politics or the current literature of France conveys the more vivid im- pression of utter and profound demoralization ; — tlie willing servitude, the craven fear, the thirsty materialism, the absence of all liberal sentiment or noble aspiration, indicated l)y the one, — the abandonment of all self-con- trol or self-respect, the surrender of all manliness, dignity, or reticence, the hunger after the most diseased, imlioly, and extravagant excitement, characteristic of the other, — or the intense and unrebuked selfishness, the passionate and slavish worship of wealtli and power, which consti- tute the basis and the soul of both alike. Of course tliere are exceptions in literature as in life. But we speak of the prevalent, the almost universal tone ; we speak of the acting, voting, deciding, characterizing mass in the one case, and of the books of the widest circulation, and the writers of the most popular repute and the most signal success, in the other. In politics there still exist a few men, — fewer, alas, each day, as their numbers are thinned by death or by despair, — the salt of the earth, but far too scanty to give it savor, the five righteous men, but not enough to save the city, — who mourn over their Les Jlystkes de Paris ; Atar-Gul. Par Eugene Sue. La Dame aux Camelias ; Le Demi-Monde, un drama ; Le Roman d'une Femme. Par Ale.x. Dumas, fils. Monte-Cristo. Par Alex. Dumas, pere. Fanny, une etude. Par Eniest Feydeau. . Confessions d'un Enfant du Sieele.' Par Alfred de Musset. Elle et Lui, par George Sand. Lui et Elle, par Paul de Musset. Lui, par Mme. Louise Collet. FRENCH FICTION. 147 degradation and resent their shame, who, "rowing hard against the stream," strive manfully, and strive to the last, to warn their countrymen and to purify and rouse their country.* But the national life, the political aspect of France, is undeniably what we have described it : the vast majority of the people in nearly every class, lost to all sense of personal dignity or public justice, is devoted to the pursuit of wealth and luxury, and ready to acquiesce in any regime and to worship any ruler that fosters this pursuit ; and questions or kicks against despotism only when, in a momentary aberration of far-siglitedness, it touches their innnediate purse ; — while even the con- stitutionalists, as they term themselves, — the liberal frondcurs, — are far more angry at us for fraternizing with their despot than with themselves for tolerating and enthroning him, and hate him almost more bitterly for the unintentional aid he has rendered to Italian liberties than for his cynical, perfidious, and sanguinary extinction of their own. So in literature — especially in that branch of it in which alone there is or can be much activity at present, and with which we are now more immediately concerned, the literature of fiction — there are still a few writers who vainly offer to their countrymen from time to time a repast refined in tone and irreproachable in taste and morals ; but the public appetite has been too long and too deeply vitiated to appreciate what is natural and pure, and turns away with a contempt which is almost loathing from dishes unseasoned .by the voluptuous, the morbid, or the monstrous. From time to time noble and .sound criticism appears in the more respectable reviews and journals, but it is powerless to alter tlie demand or to arrest the supply of the article the public asks for^, the novels which are for the most part popular — the only ones that are run after, the only ones that j7«?/ either in fame or money — are exclusively those which pander to the worst passions and the worst taste ; till, without exaggeration, it is as rare to find a successful French novel that is not scandalous as an English one that is. * Written in 1860. 148 •LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. French fiction, always moro or less diseased and in- decorous, lias in recent years passed through several dis- tinct pliases of disease, and may now almost be said to liave left simple indecorum far behind. Had it continued to exhibit merely its normal features of ordinary license and volu})tuousness, there would have been little teni])ta- tion to apjiroach the subject, and every motive to avoid it. That phase of it has been often enough animadverted upon in English publications ; no pleasure could be de- rived from its contemplation, and no new lessons could be drawn from its analysis. But since we first began to be acquainted with it, a change, or rather a succession of changes, has come over it, so strange, so repellent, and in some respects so appalling, that some instruction, at least in the way of warning, may be hoped for from studying it in a right spirit ; and it presents too marked and too extraordinary a psychological phenomenon to be ignored by any who desire to understand or penetrate the true aspect of their age. No such field was ever oH'ered to the students of moral pathology before. But in proceeding to treat of it, we are met on the threshold by an inherent and insuperable difficulty. Christian writers who endeavored to depict the moral renovation which the religion of their great Master wrought in the world, and to deduce thence prool's of its excellence and its divinity, complain that they labor under this disadvantage ; that it is impossible ibr them to paint in true colors and to describe in plain language the horrible demoralization which Christianity cured and purged away, simply because no modern society would ,tolerate the delineation. They cannot give an adequate 'conception of the contrast, because they are compelled, out of very decency and mercy, to soften down the daiker and mnre hideous features of the decaying times of Bome, Byzantium, or Alexandria. They cannot make us under- stand" what Cliristianity did, because they dare not tell \is nakedly what Paganism iras. Something of the same embarrassment besets us in dealing with our present sub- ject. "We shall have to speak of french fiction without FRENCH FICTION, 149 being able to show thorouglily what it is. We shall have to analyze its elements and its sonrces without being able adequately to exemplify or prove the correctness of our diagnosis by the most flagrant and conclusive s])ecimens. We shall have to use the strongest language and to pro- nounce the most unmeasured condemnation, while we are precluded by the very nature of the case from justi- fying the sentence by adducing and detailing before our readers the most heinous of the offences which have called it forth. There is yet another difficulty. The fact which forms the basis of nearly all the tales and romances on which we shall have to animadvert, is the habitual prevalence in France of those lawless loves, and, worse still, those liaisons where no love is, which English fiction is — or used to be — forbidden to describe and almost to allude to. Of course we are too well aware that such things are far from being unknown among ourselves, but at least they have no recognized existence : wisely or un- wisely, they are usually ignored both in general society and in literature designed for general reading ; the nov- elist may not work them up as a part of his ordinary stock in trade ; the critic, even if he have an aesthetic or an ethical aim in view, must speak of them only in veiled language and with much periphrasis. In England they are not regarded as legitimate materials for the excite- ment of interest or the development of character : if the writer of fiction uses them at all, lie is obliged to use them with the utmost reticence and moderation ; whereas the French romancer rarely dreams of dispensing with them, and often relies on little else for the construction of his plot or the fascination of his tale. With us all such violations of the moral and the social law meet with the severest and most unqualified condemnation : long may it continue so, provided only the condemnation be sincere, consistent, and free from all taint of unholy or malignant pharisaism. Among our neighbors a far more lax and lenient view is taken of such transgressions; they are classed among the common and nearly unavoid- 150 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. al)le frailties of a nature never perfect and seldom strong; in ordinary liie and ordinary.fiction they call forth only gentle blame, faint regret, and no surprise. This being the case, we must to a certain extent accept, or at least recognize, the point of view of the writers and readers of the society of which we speak ; that is to say, without for one moment admitting that their estimate of illicit passion is a just one, we must allow that it is the usual and accepted one among them, before we proceed to draw warning and instruction from observing to what lengths this fatal license has conducted the light literature of their country. We have only, as a preliminary, to clear our path by asking our readers to understand, once for all, that, as the normal prevalence of the errors or vices or frailties in question (however we may choose to desig- nate them) is assumed by all the literature we are about to estimate, it must be assumed likewise by ourselves. The inspiration of French fiction, the source from which flow half its deformities, its vile morality, and its vitiated taste, is the craving for excitement that has so long been characteristic of the nation. It is not difficult to see how this craving has been stimulated and nour- ished till it has grown into a passion that will take no denial and knows no satiety. Two generations of cease- less revolution, of dazzling conquests and bewildering defeats, of alternations of wild frenzy and prostrate de- pression, of vicissitudes as strange, as rapid, as extreme as any to be witnessed at the gaming-table, have goaded what was always a desire into an imperious necessity. The present race of Frenchmen, and their fathers even more, were born and bred amid scenes and deeds which made the battle of life a confused and desperate melee, the race of life a feverish scurry, the banquet of life a dish of mere spice, alcohol, and pepper. Glance back for a moment over the first magnificent convulsion of 1789. Call to mind all the stirring and disturl)ing thoughts of emancipation and of progress which the writers of that day had been diligently instilling into the popular brain, till half a century of new ideas acting FRENCH FICTION. 151 on five centuries of old oppressions wrought a fermenta- tion which found issue an^ utterance in such an over- throw of established notions and established things as the world had never witnessed since its birth. Grand and generous dreams of indefinite improvement ; fierce and selfish longings for satisfying vengeance ; the pros- pect of a new era ; the fancy of a heaven realized on earth ; that universal liberation from all bonds, and al- most from all obedience, that sweei^ing disbelief or doubt as to every settled axiom of religion, of morals, and of law, which is so unhinging even to trained and philo- sophic minds, and which was then diffused over all the uneducated intelligence and turbulent sensibility of France ; the sudden overthrow, nay, the actual disappear- ance, in little more .than a year, of the aristocracy, the monarchy, the Church, — of all, in a word, that men had been accustomed to reverence or fear ; the king and the noble cast down, the serf and the valet lifted up ; the first last, and the last first. Amid excitements so tremendous as these, what simple or quiet tastes could grow up or survive ? After stimulants like these, how could the relish for a pure milk diet be recovered ? Then followed reaction and disenchantment as extreme as the wild hopes which they replaced, — the guillotine, the prison massa- cres, the Eeign of Terror ; and to the excitement of pas- sionate aspirations succeeded the more absorbing and degrading excitement of a deadly fear. No one wdio has not studied tliat terrible period in detail can form an idea of the depth to which its influence penetrated into the national life. Simultaneously with this phase, but prolonged beyond it, came the marvellous victories of the half-clad, half-disciplined troops, poured forth to tlie frontiers by the Convention and the Directory ; followed by the early and brilliant conquests of the young Na- poleon, when every post brought tidings of some new achievement ; and terminated by the coujy-de-main which made him supreme ruler of an exhausted and admiring nation. For a while there was comparative quiet, as the work of reconstruction succeeded that of abolition. But, 152 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. as if ten years of such convulsions had not sufliced to demoralize the nation, they \vere to he continued and crowned by fourteen years of another sort of leAerish excitement, diilerent, indeed, but almost more disturbing. In this point of view, as in most others, the reign of Napoleon was an irreparable mischief to his country. His triumphal march over Europe — so rapid, so resist- less, and so sure, that every month seemed barren, dull, and idle that did not inaugurate a new victory and annex a ncAV realm — made all sober careers stupid and mo- notonous. Years .spent in feverish expectation and in frantic jubilee demoralize the rest of life. The Eussian campaign, the Euroj^ean coalition, the desperate struggle of 1813, the abdication, the almost fabulous recovery, the final catastrophe of AVaterloo and St. Helena, kept lip and enhanced the mad excitement. Henceforward tame and ordinary existence became unendurable to Erenchmen, except during brief moments of absolute exhaustion; and the revolution of 1830, the republic of 1848, the terrible days of June, the covp-cletat, and the second empire, seemed natiu'al and normal occurrences in such a history, — the inevitable sequels of such a tur- bulent and stormy past. Infancy, youth, and manhood spent among scenes like these leave indelible traces on a people's life. The whole soil of the national character is stamped and interi^ene- trated by the overmastering influences ; and it may be said, in a far nobler sense than that originally intended by the poet, that " Where .sucli fairies once have danced ' No grass will ever grow." The operation on literature is twofold : in the first place, readers find any less stirring incidents or less violent emotions feeble, tame, and unexciting ; and, in the second place, writers find in the familiar realities of their annals, in the tlnilling crises and the terrible catastrophes from which the country has but just emerged, and in the thousand individual histories and adventures mixed up with them, a quarry of materials for romance with FRENCH FICTION. 153 which, for richness and effectiveness, no mere fiction can compare, and which the most bold and fertile invention would find it difficult to match. The same circumstan- ces enabled the authors, to supply without stint or meas- ure what they have educated tlie audience imperiously to require. Accordingly this teeming mine has been assid- uously worked by the novelists of France ; and the national craving for stimulants lias thus been fed and fostered without being quenched or cured, — for that sort of thirst is never slaked. The time came when even stories seasoned with all the quick convulsions and lurid horrors of the Eevolution and the lieign of Terror began to pall. The demand remained. Something fresh and something stronger must be contrived to meet it. The unhealthy appetite — ra\'enous because unhetilthy — be- came clamorous for more ; like the voluptuous despot, it offered a reward for a new sensation, a new pleasure, a new dish ; and, as in that case, since the genuine and the natural was exhausted, the monstrous and the impure must be resorted to. The first mine worked was, as might be expected, the licentious. Voluptuous pictures of illicit love, in all its phases and in all its stages of progress, constantly ap- proaching the limits of decency and often overstepping them, offered at once the most natural and the most vul- gar source of excitement for the jaded appetite and the perverted taste. Every one could understand them ; every one could take an interest in them. Descriptions of a sin — the sin being forbidden by good morals, and the description of it being, forbidden by good society — presented all the attractions of a double lawlessness, in addition to their native charm. But these were so easy and became so common, the ordinary forms of them were so soon exhausted- and so certainly and rapidly palled by repetition, and the boundaries of the permissi- ble were so soon reached, that success could only be achieved by something that was extraordinary and there- fore bordered on the unnatural, by sonjething that was unpermissible and therefore degenerated into the atro- 7* 154 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS.' cious and revolting. Each writer had to surpass his predecessor, — to sny something still more shocking, to conceive sometliing still more shameful, to push daring a few steps I'urtlicr, to raise the drapery of delicacy and decorum a few inches higher, to uncover the nakedness of poor humanity a little more completely and a little more offensively. The consequences may easily be fan- cied ; in a race of this sort there is no absolute goal, or rather the goal is perpetually receding ; but the rival candidates run very fast and very far. Nearly all the French novelists of the present genera- tion have been habitually and flagrantly guilty in this respect; but perhaps the most distinctive example of this phase of mental and moral unhealthiness may be seen in the earlier tales of George Sand, who is the type, though not the chief, of sinners. Xo writer, so capable of painting the sentiment, has stained her pages more deeply with pictures of the ajjpetite of love. With, a style which for poetry and beaut}', and affluence in all the brightest coloring of nature, has had no equal since Eousseau, she has dedicated it to the production of scenes which Rousseau would have despised as an artist and shrunk from as a moralist. For a brief space she seemed about to emerge from the mire, and to be pruning and cleaning her M'ings for higher flights and for a purer air ; and Consudo and La Petite Faddte were the re- sult of this excursion into good; but she has relapsed again, and Indiana, Valentine, and Leone Leoni still remain as the most native productions of her genius, and the best specimens of the literary vice we are describing. Of course we can give no quotations, nor should we have dwelt upon the subject at all except as the first step towards the frightful degree of disease which French fic- tion has now reached. After a while, however, this species of stimulant began to pall, and a new spice was introduced. The melodra- matic and the horrible was superadded to tlie voluptuous. But the nicrcbj horrible would have been trite and pow- FRENCH FICTIOX. 155 eriess. MiuxIpi-s, suicides, torture-chambers, and scaffolds were exhausted and dried up as sources of excitement, unless some fresh element could be infused, or some change rung upon the wearied chord. This was found in the prolongation of the horror, — in the indefinite tension of the strained nerve. Pain, terror, anguish, struggle, — commonplace and endurable when lasting only a few moments, — began to tell when continued through whole pages, and spun out through frightful and breathless hours. The author in whose writings this peculiar type of excitement most frequently recurs is Victor Hugo. He has worked tliis mine through its every vein with un- relenting industry. In Biuj-Jargal he gives us a scene wherein the hero, a captive and disarmed, is left at the edge of a fearful chasm with his mortal enemy, a de- formed and malignant negro dwarf, who is preparing to slay him ; but who, before doing so, reviles and taunts him through a whole chapter. After a rescue and re- lapse, they are again alone : the dwarf rushes upon his victim, D'Auverney, with a poniard ; D'Auverney slips aside, and the dwarf falls into the abyss. To have ended matters here, however, would have been a waste of valu- able materials. Accordingly the author proceeds : — " I told you that a root of the old tree projected from a crevice in the granite rock, just above the margin of the chasm. The dwarf encountered this in his fall ; his tunic caught in the root, and seizing hold of this last support, he clung to it with extraordinary energy. His pointed cap fell off his head ; he let go his poniard, which was lost in the depths of the abyss. Suspended thus over the horrible gulf, Habibrah made convulsive efFoi'ts to regain the platform ; but his short arms were, unable to reach the edge of the escarp- ment, and his nails were torn in his impotent exertions to lay hold on the slippery surface of the overhanging rock. He howled with rage. " The least shake on my part would have suificed to have precipitated him into the roaring chasm ; but the idea of such a cowardly act never crossed my mind. This modera- tion seemed to strike him. I thanked Heaven for my unhoped- for delivei'ance, and prepared to abandon him to the fate he 15G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. so richly merited, when I licard Iiis voice, wretched and im- ploring, calling to me from the gnlf. " ' Master, master ! ' he said, ' for pity's sake don't go ! In the name of the good God, don't leave a guilty and impeni- tent wretch, whom you can save, to die this miserable death ! Alas, my strength is failing, the branch slips and yields under my hands; my weight is dragging me down; in an instant I shall lose my grasp, and the hoiTible abyss is raging beneath me. Have yoii no mercy on your poor dwarf? Won't you prove to him that white men arc better than black, and mas- ters more generous than slaves 1 ' " I was moved, and returned to the edge of the precipice : the dim light, as I looked down, showed me the hideous face of the negro, with an expression of entreaty and agonized distress which I had never seen there before. " ' Seiior Leopold,' he continued, encouraged by the pity •which I could not altogether hide, ' is it possible tlaat a man can see a fellow-creature in this frightful situation and not help him 1 Master, stretch me out a hand, — so little will save me ; and what is nothing to you is everything to me. Drag me up, for pity's sake, and my gratitude shall be equal to my ci'imes.' "'ATretch!' I exclaimed, 'recall not the recollection of them, I warn you.' " 'If I do, it is only to detest them. 0, be more generous than I was ! Heaven, I am failing ! I am going ! Give mc your hand, — your hand, in the name of the mother who bore you.' "I cannot describe how lamentable and dechirant was this cry of terror and of suffering. I forgot all that had passed, and saw in him no longer an enemy, a traitor, an assassin, but only a wretch w^hom a slight exertion of mine could res- cue from a dreadful death. He begged so piteously, and re- proach would have been so idle ! I bent down, and kneeling on the edge of the chasm, with one arm round the tree of which the root half sustained the miserable Habibrah, I stretched do\vn to him the other. He seized it with pi'o- digious streng-th in both of his ; but far from using it to endeavor to ascend, 1 felt that he was seeking to drag me with him into the gulf; and but for the support of the tree to which I was clinging, I should have been infallibly ovez-- powcred by the sudden and violent i^ull which the wretch gave me. FRENCH FICTION. 157 " ' Villain ! ' I exclaimed, ' what arc j'ou about 1 ' " ' I am avenging mj-self,' he replied with an infernal burst of laughter. ' Imbecile animal ! I have you fast : you have given yourself to me. I "was lost ; you wei'C saved : you have been ass enough to venture voluntarily into the jaws of the alligatoi', because it groaned after having roared. I am comforted now, since my death even is a vengeance. You have fallen into the snare, and now I shall have a human companion among the fishes of the lake.' " ' Traitor ! ' I answered, stretching myself back ; ' is it thus 3'ou reward me for endeavoring to save your life 1 ' " ' Yes,' he answered ; ' I know I might have saved myself by your aid, but I pi'efer that you should die with me. I like your death better than my life. Come ! ' " With this explanation his two hard bronzed hands fas- tened upon mine with a tremendous grasp ; his eyes flared ; his month foamed ; his strength, whose loss a moment ago he had so piteously deplored, returned to him, augmented by the fury of revenge ; he set his feet like two levers against the side of the rock, and bounded about like a tiger on the root which still supported him, and which he endeavored to break, that his weight might the more surely drag me down with him into the abyss, laughiyg all the time with the fran- tic laugh of a demoniac. One of my knees was fortunately fast in a crevice of the rock ; my arm was in a manner fixed to the tree round which I clung ; and I struggled against the efforts of the dwarf with all the despairing energy of self-pres- ervation. From time, to time, as I could collect breath, I called loudly on Bug-Jargal ; but the noise of the waterfall left me little expectation of being heard. '' Meanwhile the dwarf, who had not anticipated so much resistance, redoubled his efforts, and wore me out with a series of furious tugs. I began to lose my strength ; my arm was almost paralyzed with cramp ; my sight began to fail ; livid lights danced before my eyes ; my ears tingled with strange sounds ; I heard the root cracking before it finally gave way, and the monster laughing and howling immediately below me. In a last effort of despair I called, ' Bug-Jargal ! ' once more, and was answered by the barking of a dog. I turned my eyes : Bug-Jai-gal and his faithful animal were at the entrance of the subteiTanean passage. He saw my dan- ger at a glance. ' Hold for a moment more,' he cried. Habi- 158 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. brah, maddened by my prospect of salvation, and foaming with rage, called out, * Come ! I say, come ! ' and collected for a last pull his preternatural vigor. My wearied arm lost its hold of the tree ; one moment more and I was gone, when I was sci/cd fi'om behind by Rask. His timely aid saved me. Habibrali, exhausted by his final effort, let go my hand, the root on which })e leaned broke beneath his weight ; and as Kasic drew me violently back, the wretched dwarf, screaming out a parting curse, fell back into the horrible abyss, " Tliis was the end of my uncle's jester." A similar scene is depicted witli even greater poM-er in Notre Dame dc Paris, the clicf-cVoeuvrc of Victor Hugo. A beautiful gypsy-girl, Esmeralda, — loved reverentially by (Quasimodo, a deformed, deaf, one-eyed dwarf, loved sensually by the priest of Notre Dame, whose attempts she had repulsed, — is being hung in the Place de la Greve, having been betrayed to death by the humiliated and vindictive priest. Quasimodo and the priest are kneeling on the highest balustrade of the tower of the cathedral, vratching the dying convulsions of the wretched girl, — the one with agonized sympathy, the other with diabolical joy. " At the moment when the struggles of the dying girl were the most horrible, a demoniacal laugh — a laugh such as a man cannot utter till he has put off humanity — burst forth on the livid countenance of the priest. Quasimodo could not hear the laugh, but he saw it. He stepped back a pace or two behind him, and then rushing furiously upon him, hurled the wretched archdeacon over the edge of the balustrade. " The priest exclaimed, ' Damnation ! ' and fell. The stone gutter, over which he had been kneeling, arrested him in his fall. He clung to it with a despairing grasp, and was about to utter a second ciy, when he looked up and saw above him the vengeful f;ice of Quasimodo. Then he became silent. " The abyss was below him, — a f;ill of two hundred feet, and then the pavement. In this hoi-rible position, the arch- deacon spoke not a word, uttered not a groan. He only twisted himself on the gutter in frantic efforts to climb up again ; but his hands had no hold on the smooth granite, and his feet only scraped the wall without helping him. Those FRENCH FICTION. 159 who have mounted the towers of Notre Danie may remember a stone projection uTimediately under the hahistrade. It was on this projection that the miserable priest exhausted all his strength in endeavoring to gain a footing, but in vain. " Quasimodo might have resciied him from his impending fate by simply stretching out his hand ; but he did not even look at him. He saw nothing but the Place de la (jreve, the gibbet, and the gypsy-girl. He leaned against the precise stone of the balustrade where the priest had kneeled a mo- ment before ; and there gazing mute and motionless on the only object the world contained for him, he stood like a man struck by lightning, while tears flowed silently and fast from his single eye. " The archdeacon panted for breath. His bald forehead streamed with perspiration ; his nails were torn by the stone ; his knees were excoriated by the rough wall. He heard his surplice, which had catight upon the gutter, crack and tear at each fresh struggle. To complete the horror of his situation, the gutter ended in a leaden pipe, wdiich already began to bend under his weight. The archdeacon felt it slowly sink- ing under him. The miserable man said to himself that, when his hands should be paralyzed with fxtigue, when his surplice should be quite torn, when the lead should have al- together given way, he must fall, and indescribable terror seized upon his soul. From time to time he looked down upon a small platform about ten feet below him, formed by some broken stones and sculptured figures, and besought Heaven in his agony to let him pass his whole life on this space of two feet square, rather than die this fearful death. Once he looked down on the pavement of the Place, far, fixr beneath ; and when he raised his head his hair was standing on end with horror. " The silence of these two men was something terrible. While the priest was struggling in this frightful fashion, a few feet above him Quasimodo gazed at the scaffold and wept. " The archdeacon at last, seeing that all his struggles only served to shake the frail support to which he clung, lay per- fectly still. He was there, holding by the gutter, scarcely breathing, never moving, giving no other sign of life than the convulsive twitchings of the dreamer who dreams that he is falling. His eyes were wide open, fixed, and seemed starting- out of his head. Little by little he lost ground, his fingers IGO LITERACY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. slipped along the gutter, the lead gradually bent further and further, and he became increasingly conscious of the weight of his body and the weakness of his arms. He looked one by one at the impassive figures sculptured on the tower, like him suspended over the abyss, but without pity for him or terror for themselves. Everything was stone around ; before his eyes grotesque and monstrous heads, far below him at the bottom the pavement of the square, just above him Quasi- modo weeping. " In the Place below were some groups of curious oljscrv- crs, who were quietly watching the struggles of the priest, and trying to guess who was tlie madman that amused him- self with such strange and perilous antics. The priest heard their comments as their faint clear voices reached him in the still air, saying, ' But he will break bis neck.' " Quasimodo wept. *' At last the wretched man, foaming with rage and terror, perceived that all was of no avail. He collected all his re- maining strength for one despairing effort. He stiffened his limbs upon the gutter, pushed against" the wall frantically with his knees, fastened his hand to a cleft in the stone, and succeeded in raising himself a few inches. But the commo- tion caused a sudden bend in the leaden pipe, his surplice was I'ent in twain, and feeling everything give way beneath him, he shut his eyes, let go his hold, and fell. " Quasimodo watched him falling. A fall from such a height is seldom perpendicular. The archdeacon, launched into the air, fell at first with head downward and arms ex- tended, then he turned round twice or thrice and fell on the roof of a building, where he was partially crushed and broken. But he was not dead when he struck ; Quasimodo saw him endeavor to cling to the tiles, but the incline was too steep, and he had no strength left. He slipped down the roof, and fell with a rebound upon the pavement, where he moved no more. " Quasimodo then raised his eye to look once more upon the girl, whose limbs hanging from the gibbet he could see still quivering under her white dress in the last agonies of death ; then he looked down on the archdeacon stretched at the foot of the tower, crushed out of the very semblance of humanity, and exclaimed with a sob which shook his whole fi-ame, * Alas, all I ever loved ! ' " FRENCH FICTION. 161 But perhaps the greatest achievement in this line is to be found in Lc Dernier Jour d'un Condamne, by the same author. This is a whole volume supposed to be written by a convict the day before his execution, describing in the minutest detail the sensations, anticipations, reflec- tions, terrors, and agonies of each successive hour as it brings him nearer to his doom. For a shocldng display of perverted genius and power we know nothing like it ; but quot.ations are of course impossible. There is some- thing revolting as well as preposterous in the conception of a man on the eve of a violent and certain death thus watching, anatomizing, and recording his own awful emo- tions. Nearly every observer has been struck with the hold which the desire and the pursuit of wealth and material prosperity seem to have taken of the French nation. Formerly other passions predominated over the thirst for riches. Glory, honor, enterprise, intellectual distinction, were more than gold. The man who sought to be wealthy, and who became so, used to be held in low esteem in com- parison with him who sought to be great or famous, and attained his end. Xow all this is changed. The taste for luxury has become a passion. The millionnaire has become the national idol. The avaricious appetite seems to have taken possession of the whole people. Dreams of unexpected, sudden, fabulous wealth appear to be uni- versally indulged in. Many causes have contrilnited to this. Eevolutions, rapid and incalculable turns of the vfheel of political fortune, have left scarcely any power stable and enduring except that of money. Millions gained in a few months by contractors, stock-jobbers, and railway speculators have gone far to demoralize the na- tion. Every one sees that the men who have thus A'ault- ed into affluence are not specially clever or specially industrious ; and every one fancies there is no reason why he may not do as w^ell as they. Then the prevalent irreligion of most classes, except the poor, has taught all to look for their j)aradise on earth, and to frame it out of 1G2 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. the most oartlily elements, — out of luxury, which wealth could furnish, — out of love, such as wealth could also buy. Those who could not revel in the wealth itsnlf, could at least revel in the descri])tion of it. Those who failed of the reality could find some compensation, some delusive enjoyment, in the vivid picture and the transient dream. Tims arose the demand for romances of which the central figure is some hero possessed of countless and inexhaustilde millions, and of which every ])i\'^e gives evidence of an invention and imagination actually on the rack to produce conceptions of the most recherche and un- heard-of luxury. The writers were as eager to supply as the public to demand this gorgeous, intoxicating, and un- wholesome pabulum. For their passion for gold, and all that gold can jDurchase, had been goaded and inflamed almost into frenzy by their peculiar position. Usually poor, yet in virtue of their education in close contact daily with the rich ; living a life of toil and privation, yet, in virtue of their brevet rank as men of talent, enjoying, on a footing of nominal equality, the hospitality of the lux- urious millionnaire ; surrounded with every species of ap- petizing pleasure which they see others plunged in and gloating over, but \vhich they are too penniless to share ; spending their evenings in brilliant theatres or magnificent saloons, amid every kind of beauty and indulgence that can delight or irritate the senses, and retiring from all this at night to their squalid garret, their homeless hearth, and their empty soul, — who can wonder that their fancy should run riot in meretricious pictures of material splen- dors and material joys ? and when once embarked in this career, millions are as easy to create as thousands, and far more exciting. Here we have the fons ct origo of that class of French novels of which Montc-Cristo is type and crown, — a work which has driven thousands half wild with envy and impotent desire. The plot of Montc-Criato is as follows : A meritori- ous young sailor, captain of a merchant-vessel belonging to Marseilles, is denounced as a Buonapartist agent by two enemies, one of whom desires his post while the FRENCH FICTIOX. 163 other covets his mistress. He is arrested on his mar- riage day and imprisoned in tiie Chateau d'lf, an island off the south coast of France. Here he remains for four- teen years, in the course of which he manages, by means of a subterranean passage which he excavates, to estab- lish a communication with an old and very learned Italian abbe, who teaches him much science and many languages, and ends with disclosing to him the secret of a vast treasure which he believes to be hidden in the island of Monte-Cristo, a desert rock near the Tuscan shore. The abbe dies, and the young sailor conceals himself in his shroud, and contrives to be thrown into the sea instead of his deceased friend. He cuts open the shroud ; escapes by swimming ; goes to Monte-Cristo ; discovers and disinters the treasure (which consists of countless millions in gold and precious jewels) ; and after a few years reappears in the world as Count of ]\Ionte- Cristo, and the possessor of fabulous wealth, to com- mence his work of rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies, — both of wliich purposes he carries out by means of the most complicated plots, mysterious appear- ances, and melodramatic coirps dc theatre, in the worst taste, and of the most extravagant conception. AVher- ever he appears, he lives in the most astounding and elaborate luxury, and behaves with the most ostentatious generosity ; but the generosity rather of a ^jari'c^iw than a prince. His mansions are furnished with unimaginable splendor ; his yacht is a miracle of gorgeous and elegant contrivances ; he presents Avonderful diamonds to wretch- ed innkeepers who have served him, and bestows unri- valled emeralds on the Sultan and the Pope to purchase the freedom of a beautii'ul Greek and the life of a Roman bandit. He is served by black and silent servants ; wherever he goes, unexpected allies and jJroteges start up beneath his feet to do his bidding ; he is in secret com- munication with all the potentates of the eartli ; he makes appointments to the minute montlis beforehand and thousands of miles distant, keeps them at the last stroke of the clock, and apologizes for being two seconds IGi LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. late. In short, the whole story reads like the' Arabian Nights adapted to Paris life in tlie reign of Louis Phi- lippe. Tiie taste of the -whole is shocking; but it cannot be denied that the pictures are gorgeous, and thoroughly Oriental both in their magnificence and their monstrosity : nor can we wonder that the work attained an extraordi- nary popularity among a people thirsting for material luxury and enjoyment, — "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." The next morbid phase into which the insatialde pas- sion for excitement plunged the novelists of France is that of which the works of Eugene Sue, especially Atar- Gul and Lcs Mysth^es de Paris, offer the most j)erfect type. It may be called " the crhninal-monstrositij phase," or the pliase of moral horrors and abominations. Its peculiar feature is a combination of the morally detest- able with the psychologically impossible. The imagina- tion is strained, spurred, and as it were stimulated by intoxicating drinks, to conceive every variety and abyss of crime ; to paint the worst dens of infamy and sanguin- ary brutality which the cellars and catacombs of Paris can supply, to depict the daily life and the habitual senti- ments, desires, and language of the hideous wretches who inhabit them ; and then to palace in the midst of these obscene haunts and these abandoned desperadoes some maiden of angelic loveliness and purity, who walks un- harmed among the squalid and ruffianly vice around her. AVhere the plot does not lend itself to this unnatural conception, the needed contrast is found in some other fashion. Atar-Gul is the story of a domestic negro in one of the West Indian colonies of France, who is pos- sessed through life by the most diabolic spirit of cruel- ty and revenge ; Avho, having his master's full confidence and regard, continues to be considered by every one as a perfect specimen and treasure of devotion and gratitude, yet pursues for years a deliberate plan for tlie destruction of his master's family and the infliction of every species of suffering he can devise; and linally, when his master FRENCH FICTION". 165 is paralytic and unable either to defend himself or de- nounce his enemy, tortures his last hours by explaining to him the various schemes by which he had made his life miserable, and gloats over the impotent horror and indignation of the man who had so long loved and trusted him, and whom at last he thus barbarously undeceives. The finale and crowning stroke of the conception is the awarding to this finished and utterly unredeemed ruffian of the Monthyon prize for pre-eminent virtue, by men who had witnessed his apparent devotion, but were un- acquainted with the true secret. Atar-Gul was, we believe, the first production of Eugene Sue ; Les Mysteres de Paris, which followed it some years later, was every w^ay worthy of so unhealthy a debut. This work enjoyed for a considerable period almost un- exampled popularity and circulation. That it should have done so appears to us in the highest degree discredit- able to the critical as well as to the moral taste of the French ; for anything more confused and unartistic than the narrative, anj^thing more unnatural and unreal than the characters (with one or two exceptions), it is im- possible to conceive. Nearly all the dramatis pcrsonce are criminals of the lowest order and the most desperate and depraved natures. Nearly all the more striking and labored scenes are laid in those secluded or subterranean haunts of squalid misery and loathsome sin with which a great city like Paris is sure to swarm. Every atrocious crime, from gigantic swindling to hired murder, which lawless fancy could invent or lawless men could perjie- trate, is here delineated in the most revolting detail. The actors are brought upon the stage only to commit these crimes. The men, the women, even the children, are rather born devils than fallen and abandoned human beings. The author seems to have resolved that no one should be able to surpass him, or to find it worth while to follow him, in this line. He has exhausted the field. We verily believe he has left nothing to be gathered by any gleaner. In the midst of all these lurid horrors two characters are introduced by way of relief and contrast. IGG LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. One is a young sovereign prince, Grand Duke of Gerol- stein, gifted witli vast wealth, irresistible fascination, and iabulous physical strength, who goes about in various disguises, as he expresses it, " playing at Providence," re- lieving misery, righting wrongs, and punishing crime. In his judgments and inflictions, it miglit strike an ordinary reader that he is scarcely less scrupulous, natural, or decent than the criminals whom he detects and crushes. He puts out the eyes of one hardened murderer, by way of rendering his punishment appropriate and lingering. He lets loose one woman of preternatural fascinations and preternatural profligacy (everything in the book is preternatural, superlative, and fabulous) on a notary whose crimes he desires to drag to light, with orders (which are executed to the letter and described as minutely as in a proces verbal) to drive him into frenzy ^y perpetually provoking his sensual desires and never gratifying them. Yet this Prince is tlie virtuous man of the book. The female miracle of it is Fleur de Marie, a young maiden, the lost daughter of wealthy and noble parents, — of the above-mentioned Grand Duke and his mistress, in fact, but whom Podolph believed to be dead, — who is brought up amid murderers, prostitutes, and thieves of the very lowest and filthiest description ; but who has retained through all surroundings her innate purity of soul, exquisite delicacy of sentiment, and rich warmth of heart. She is beautifully painted, but, as we have said, she is a psychological impossibility. Such was the romance wdiicli for a while dominated Paris, and contrilnited not a little to the election of the author to the National Assembly ten years ago, by an overwhelm- ing and nearly unexampled majority of votes, as the representative of the Socialist party. The imenviable success of opening an entirely new vein in this mine of intellectual pathology has been achieved by Alexander Dumas the younger, — the son of tlie most prolific and extravagant romance-writer of this, or perhajis of any, day. Monic-Cristo is the typical pro- duction of the father; La Dame aux Camelias, the typical FRENCH FICTION. 1G7 production of the son. The specialite of M. Dumas, fils (as he is usually termed), — the particular field which he has selected, — is the delineation of the clcmi-monde, or courtesan life. In France this world crosses the other more legitimate world so frequently, the two societies run so parallel and so often touch and even intermingle, that pictures of the one have almost always involved allusions to, and occasional excursions within the limits of, the other. Episodes and complications connected with the demi-monde are therefore to be met with in many recent Parisian novels ; but M. Dumas, fils, is the first writer who has deliberately, consistently, and as it were almost professionally, laid his scenes in this anomalous world, and chosen his characters from among the people who inhabit it and frequent it. La Dame aux Camelias and Le Demi-Monde (which is a drama, and had an enor- mous success when brought out on the stage) are devoted to the description of courtesan life ; and Le Roman d\cne Femmc is a narrative in which the two societies — the recognized and the unrecognized — are placed side by side, with all their clashing engagements and incongruous affections and inextricable links, — with their painful contrasts and still more painful resemblances. It is im- possible to deny that M. Dumas, fils, is a master of his craft. Not only is he thoroughly at home in the society which he depicts, not only does he know to its very core and in all its recesses the social and (so to speak) the inner life of its denizens, both male and female ; but he handles his materials as an artist, a philosopher, and al most as a moralist, — if that epithet can fairly be ap- plied to a man too familiar with all forms of profligacy to shrink from any, to whom voluptuous indulgence is one of the ordinary phenomena of life, and who does not even profess to have any sentiments of right or wrong concerning it. He is a conscientious and consummate workman ; he makes a really profound study of his sub- ject ; he prepares his canvas with scientific care ; his drawing is always distinct ; his coloring, always vivid^ is never outrageous ; his figures, such as they are, are in 1G8 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. liarmony witli tliemselves and in kcepinrr with each other; lie never condescends to the monstrous, and scarcely ever to the loathsome. Compared with his father, he is a model of high art; compared with Eugene Sue, he is almost a classic ; compared with Ernest Feydean, he may be regarded as decent and almost pure. It is true he has expressly selected scenes and characters which it is usual to ignore, or to notice at a distance, or to look at and ])ass to the other side ; it is true that he descril)es them with a plainness of language and fulness of detail hitherto un- exampled in works intended to take rank as literature, to be read avowedly, and to lie on the tables of decent drawing-rooms ; it is true there is something startling and almost stunning in the unapologetic and as it were physio- logical coolness of his analysis. But he writes rather like a man to w'hom reticence is unknovv-n than to whom license is attractive. He has, indeed, no scruples of modesty to restrain him from saying anything which it lies in his way to say ; but, on the other hand, he has not, like so many of his countrymen, a disordered prurience perpetually goading him to go out of his way to find pre- cisely the thing which he ought not to say. In I'act, though about the most lawless of French novelists, yet, compared with most of them, he may almost be deemed estimable; and if it be permissible at all — which it is hard to grant — to paint in detail a life of which frailty, sin, and often abandoned viciousness constitute the atmo- sphere and action, then there is little to quarrel with either in the science or the talent of the painter.* If we could venture to separate the tendency of a work from its features and its character, or to set off the les- sons it is fitted to convey to thoughtful tninds against the tone of its sentiments and the probable influence of its * From this appreciative admission — which in its context here is al- most praise — we must make, however, one weighty exception. An- tonine, the last work of M. Dumas, in the cold cynicism of its con- clusion, and still more in its shameless imveiling of some of the most perverse and revolting vagaries of unhallowed passion, seems to us the saddest illustration and measure of French demoralization yet given to the world. FRENCH FICTION. 1G9 pictures upon ordinary readers, we should be more than half disposed to class M. Dumas' novels among moral fictions. There pervades them all a conviction, as pro- found as" that of Solomon, and based upon a similar experience, of the utter worthlessness of sensual en- joyments, of the hollowness of a life of pleasure, of the disappointment and satiety of those who lead it, of the mockery of all vicious liopes, of the delusive nature of all casual and wandering affections. The most bound- less appliances of luxury, the most complete and intoxi- cating of illicit successes, are " apples on the Dead Sea shore." The better the instincts and the nobler the capac- ities of the votary of pleasure, the more certain and the more bitter will be his disenchantment. The endeavor to import into the life of the demi-monde any real senti- ment or any genuine affection is persistently and convin- cingly represented as inevitably hopeless and fatal. The actors in his sad dramas of passion and of sin are always punished and always wretched. They pay for hours of frenzied and forbidden joys by years of fearful expiation. The utterly heartless and selfisli are always shown to be the only ones tolerably happy ; and these are never made the attractive or the fascinating personages of the story. This is cynical morality, no doubt, but it is morality which will produce its effect notwitlistanding ; and all the more so upon the class to whom it is addressed, as springing out of reaction and experience, and not out of principle, and as coming from a man in whom the moral sense, as we understand it, seems to have no existence. In the Dame aux Camelias, the heroine, a courtesan awakened to purity and aspiration by a real passion, ends a life consisting of scenes of the most poignant and ever-recurring anguish, varied only with days of transient and precarious rapture, by a death of lingering and tortured desolation ; while her lover is, and deserves to be, almost more wretched than herself. In the Roman dune Fcmme, an exqui- site and chaste young wife, whose thread of life, owing to a casual frailty of her husband, becomes entangled with that of a clever and merciless lorctte, dies broken-hearted 8 170 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. at the age of twenty-two, having destroyed hnsband, father, child, and friend, by the fault of one nearly nn- conscious hour. With M. Dumas, retribution is abun- dantly and logically dealt out to all the frail and guilty. Vice is never made happy, except it is so abandoned and so gross as to lose all its fascinations, and to become re- pellent and not dangerous. From these tales — and from aYiother which in some features may be classed with them, and which has re- cently earned an infamous celebrity * — we gather two or three features of Parisian social life which throw much light on the subject we are discussing. One is particularly noticeable. Their heroes have nothing else to do in life but to make love. They have no business, no profession, no occupation. Many of them are men of fortune, who can afford to be idle, and to waste wealth in the pursuit of pleasure. But this is by no means uni- versally or necessarily the case. Tliose who have only a scanty income — seidemcnt cle quoi vivrc, as they express it — seem to lead pretty much the same sort of life, as long as their means last, and sometimes long after they are ruined. AVhen this point is reached, they game, con- tract debts, marry an heiress, or blow out their brains. In England the great majority of young men of educa- tion have something regular to do, — an employment at least, if not a profession. If they are born to a fortune, they have usually political duties or occupation connected with the management of their estates, or they travel or enter the army. If they are poor, they embrace com- merce or the civil service, or some one or other of the laborious callings that lead to wealth. If they have only * Fanny, by Ernest Feydeau. It is scarcely fair, however, to i^ank this disreputable volume, the succes.s of which is in itself a scandal, with the artistic performances of M. Dumas, Jils. It is a mere juctnre — drawn with a certain power and richness of coloring no doubt — of irrational and ungoverned passion ; and is stained by indelicacies more monstrous in imagination and more daring in expression than are to be found in any other specimen of this sort of literature that has fallen under our notice". Its excess of license, rather than any notable ability, we believe, caused its sudden popularity. FRENCH FICTION. 171 a moderate income, they almost always eke it out by entering on some profession that is respectable, if not very lucrative. It is exceptional, and is not considered credita- ble, for a j^oung man to be without some recognized and regular occupation or vocation. In France, on the con- trary, — in French novels at least, — what is here the exception appears to be the rule. The result is twofold, judging by the descriptions of society which we are now considering. In the first place, these men being ut- terly desceuvres, without any other call upon their time, give themselves up wholly to the contrivances and the enjoyments of intrigue. When in love, they throw themselves unreservedly into the pastime ; their whole thoughts and their entire hours are absorbed in it ; they do nothing else morning, noon, and niglit ; it is not to them an episode, a reward, or a refreshment, — it is their daily bread, their business, their calling, their lilDor, their life. The lover does not go to his mistress in his leisure moments, in his hours of relaxation, in liis holidays, in his evenings, " after office hours " : he lies at her feet all day and every day ; he adu- lates, contemplates, and caresses her from jMonday morning till Saturday night. * He is described as plunged in a sort of sea of delirious and delusive into.xi- catiou, coming to the surface only every now and then to breathe. The result, of course, inevitably is both that — thinking of nothing else — passion is pampered into an excess and perverted into fancies which together be- come almost insanity ; and that — doing nothing else — * " J'allaischez elle k I'heure de dejeuner ; n'ayant rien a faire de la journee, je ne sortais qu'avec elle. Elle me reteiiait a diner, la soiree s'eiisuivait par consequent ; bientot, lorsi^ue I'heure de rentrer arrivait, nous iniagiuanies luille pretextes, nous primes mille precautions illusoires qui, au fond, n'eu etaient point. Entin je vivais, pour ainsi dire, chez elle." — Confessions d'un Enfant du Siede, par Alfred de Musset. See also Dame aux Camelias and Antonine, passim. " Mon existence etait sedentaire. Je jiassais la journee chez ma maitresse : mon plus grand plaisir etait de I'emmener a la canipagne durant les beaux jours d'ete, et de me couclier pres d'elle dans les bois, siir I'herbe, ou sur la mousse En hiver, comma elle aimait le monde, nous courions les bals et les masques, en sorte que cette vie oisive ue cessait jamais." — Ibid. 172 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. sentiment flies out from sheer weariness and reaction, and becomes quenched in sickening satiety. The liai- son, even when comparatively pure and noble, having no relief or variety while it lasts, cannot, in the nature of things, last long. In the second place, — and this is a consequence shared in a qualified degree by all great cities where the rich and idle congregate, — tlie nvuuber of these idle men who have to kill time in seeking jjleas- nre goes far to explain the laxity of morals and irailty of reputations believed to prevail among the feinmes dit monde in France. It is a social country ; people live much in public, and much in company. A far larger por- tion of the time both of men and women is passed in making and receiving visits than with us. The number of people available for this occupation is unusually great. So many men have nothing to do but to pay court to women, and no scruples to prevent them from paying it in any mode and under any circumstances, that, in cer- tain classes of society, women may be said to pass a con- siderable portion of their lives in a state of siege ; they are perpetually surrounded by courtiers and " pretend- ers " ; and as, alas ! they are nearly as unoccupied as their adulators, and often quite as ennvyees, what wonder that so many fall under the combined influence of tempta- tion, tedium, and bad example ! Again : nothing makes a stronger or more painful im- pression on the reader than the unfeeling brutality with which the lovers in these tales habitually treat their mistresses, even when these mistresses are ladies of high position, superior education, and unblemished reputation. If any one is disposed to think lightly and leniently of those habits of license and intrigue which seem so gen- eral in France, and which are far from unknown here, he w-ill do well to ponder this peculiar phase of character, as depicted in the literature in question by those Avho know it well and share it so thoroughly that the}' liave almost ceased to excuse it or to be conscious of it. In the novels of George Sand, of Dumas, Jils, of Ernest Feydeau, and of Alfred de Musset, the heroines are la- FRENCH FICTION. 173 dies endowed with every amiable and attractive quality, except that rigid principle which is scarcely to be looked for in such society ; fascinating, affectionate, full of heart and soul ; capable not only of earnest and passionate but of devoted and self-sacrificing attachment, and lavishinof all the priceless treasures of a rich and noble nature on their unworthy suitors ; risking if not actually losing for them peace, fame, a calm conscience, and a happy home ; giving themselves up with a completeness and confid- ingness of surrender which would be lovely and almost sublime, if only the cause were lawful and the object worthy ; trusting, soothing, aiding, enduring, worshipping, with a truth and fervor in which woman so rarely fails, and which man so rarely merits. But the men of the story — the objects and inheritors of all this affection — are represented — almost invariably, and as if it were the rule of life from which trutli and notoriety permit the artist no departure — as becoming at once, not indeed insensible to, but utterly ungi'ateful for, the wealth of love lavished upon them ; repaying devotion with insult, and abandonment with cxigeance ; answering every fresh proof of fidelity and self-surrender with groundless jeal- ousies and mean suspicions ; meeting every concession with some new outrage or some new demand ; treating the most faithful, tender, and noble-minded mistresses, the moment they have them in their power, as no gentle- man could treat even the poorest fillc perdue who still retained a woman's decency and a M'oman's form ; in a word, displaying in every word and action a heartless egotism, a harsh and cruel tyranny, and a total want of respect and consideration for the most natural as for the most sacred feelings, which would seem incredible on any less authority than their own. For it is remarkable that the novels which most detail all these cruel and selfish inflictions — which specify the worst brutalities inflicted by these lovers upon fond and tender women — are all in the autohioc/raphical form : it is the barbarian who describes his own barbarities, — the executioner who records all the slow elaborate tortures he has practised 174 LITERARY AXD SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. on his victim, — sometimes, indeed, with a sort of con- ventional self-condemnation, thougli scarcely ever with self-loathing or self-sur])ri8e, — never with any indica- tion of that burning slianie wliich would make the record of such things impossible, even were the commission of them not so. It will be obvious that the worst exemplifications of this hideous feature cannot stain our pages. It is not easy even to adduce any. They are so numberless and so perpetually recurring, that to quote them would be often to give the whole narration. La Dame aux Cami- llas is full of them, — consists of them, — some of a character and enormity which are scarcely conceivable, — yet all narrated by the offender himself. The same may be said of Fanny. The same may be said of Con- fessions d'nn Enfant du Steele. The same may be said of File et Lui. In fact, they are all stories of a lover torturing his devoted and sensitive mistress to death by a series of ingenious insiilts, outrageous suspicions, cruel and exacting caprices, refined brutality, and a sort of cold superlative selfishness i'or which a fitting epithet really is not to be found. After describing a number of these brutalities, some of them almost incredilde, the Evfant du Sieele sums up thus : " Lecteur, cela dura six mois : pendant six mois entiers, Brigitte, calomniee, exposee aux insultes du monde, eut a essuyer de ma part tons les dedains et toutes les injures qu'un libertiu colere et cruel pent prodiguer a la fille qu'il paye." * * Fanny is from first to last the historj'', bj' himself, of a lover who maltreats and torments his mistress in every mode except actual per- sonal violence, — by sarcasms, by insults, b)' suspicions, by cruel out- rages upon every sentiment of fluty, honor, and natural affection which she is endeavoring to retain. Yet most of the outrages are of such a character that we have searched in vain for any passage that it would be possible to extract. AVe can only convey the most faint and general conception of the narrative by saying that the lover begins by being furious because his mistress stays by the bedside of her sick child, in- stead of visiting him as usual ; that he then falls so low as to regale her ears with every false and scandalous rumor that he can collect regarding her husband, whom, though she has betrayed him, she still esteems and values ; that he abuses her because she defends this husband against his calumnies ; and finally that, to punish the unhappy lady for refusing to FRENCH FICTION. 175 Another characteristic and, as far as we know, unique feature of these novels is the repeated pictures they pre- sent to us, not only of absolutely uncontrolled passions and emotions, indulged without reticence or shame, but of tlie entire absence apparently of any consciousness that such abandonment of all self- restraint is in any way disgraceful and unmanly. The heroes go into the most outrageous furies ; they roll on the ground in agonies of tears ; they pass from the wildest excesses of love into the wildest excesses of hatred ; they become speechless with rage ; they gesticulate like madmen ; they give vent to all the unseemly violences of the half-childish, half- savage human animal, without dignity, decency, or dra- pery. It is not so much that they lose all self-control, as that they give no intimation that self-control is con- sidered needful, or the want of it shameful. Extremes to which no provocation could goad an Englishman seem to be simple every-day occurrences among these spoiled children of license and intrioue. " The first thing I did " (says one), "as soon as I was able to rise after my v/ound, was to run to my mistress's house. I found her alone, sitting in the corner of her room, her countenance fallen and disturbed. I loaded her with the most violent re- proaches ; I was drunk with despair. / cried out till the vjhole house echoed with the clamor ; and at the same time my tears so interrupted my loords that I FELL ON THE BED to let them Jloio freely." He ends by striking his mistress on the back of tlie neck ; and when, in spite of all this treatment, she comes to him the same evening to befj forgiveness and reconciliation, he takes a carving-knife and threatens to kill lier. The same man, a year or two later, finds another lady to love him, to whom he behaves much in the same way, — "treating her" (he says) "now as an abandoned woman, and the next instant as a divin- ity. A quarter of an hour after insulting her, I was fly with him, and abandon reputation, husband, and children at once, he, out of mere horrible perversity and spite, ]>lunges into every sort of low debauchery ; and returns to her, day after day, soiled and reeking from the haunts of infamy in which he has been endeavoring, as it were, to revenge himself upon her ! And all this he relates himself ! 17G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. kneeling at her feet ; as soon as I ceased to accuse, I be- gan to apologize ; when I could no longer rail at her, I wept over her. A monstrous delirium, a rapturous fever, seized upon me ; I nearly lost my senses in the violence of my transports; I did not know what to say, or to do, or to imagine, to repair the evil I had wrought. I spoke of blowing out my brains if I ever ill-treated her again. These alternations of ipassion often lasted vliolc nifjhts!'* The following is the reception given to a lady who comes to visit her lover (whom she had wronged, certainly) as he recovers from a severe illness : — " EUe se pencha sur mon lit, et des deux mains souleva son voile ' Fanny ! ' m'ecriai-je tout-a-coup, en levant les deux bras. Elle s'afFaissa en sanglotant sur ma poitrine. Mais la memoire m'^tait revenu avec la connaissance, et la frajypant au front de mes poings fermes, je la detachai de moi en m'ecriant cemme un furieux : ' Va-t'en d'ici ! ' Elle crut que j'etais fou encore, et se detourna en pleurant ; mais retrouvant uu reste de force dans ma colere, je la frappais encore a Vepaule, et m'elangant de mon lit, je m'abattais sur elle, et roulai ^ tcrre a ses pieds." t One quotation more and we have done. This novel ends with another scene, similar, but yet more atrocious. After heaping every sort of verbal outrage and abuse on the unhappy woman who had given herself to him, for six or seven pages of fluent insult, the narrator of his own shame proceeds : —^ " Elle se leva enfin d^sesperee, et voxilut partir. Mais je la retins, la poussai au fond de la chambre, et m'adossant contra la porte, les bras croises : ' Tu entendras tout ! ' m'ecriai-je. Et alors je me mis cl haleter ; et ne trouvant plus rieu a lui * Confessions d'lcn Enfant du Si&cle. These are not, as might be imagined, specimens taken from the poor production of some hajk ca- terer for the lowest class of readers. They are extracts from a work of unusual power, of profound melancholy, and sadly and almost sound- ly moral in the lesson it inculcates. It contains the truest, most ]iainful, and most warning pictures we have ever met with of the certainty and the terrible degree in which a career of profligacy, however brief and un- congenial, poisons all legitimate enjoyment and all purer and serener love. t Fanny, par Ernest Feydeau. FRENCH FICTION. 177 dire, je la menagai des poings, en irepignant et en cricuit ; et elle me regardait de cute avec un indicible terreur. Enfin les pa- roles, une fois de plus, jaillirent de ma bouche : 'Jamais je n'ai cru en toi. Je sentais si bien que tu me trompais, qu'a mon tour — malheureux que je suis ! — j'ai voulu souiller notre amour. Apprends-le done, si tu ne t'en es pas dout^e ; moi qui t'adorais, je t'ai tromp^e avec les plus viles des femmes.' " Conceive an English gentleman in such a passion with the faithless lady whom he loved that his fury cannot find utterance, setting his back against the door, panting with rage, stamping and shaking his fists at her like a dumb idiot ; and at last, when words come to his relief, using his recovered speech to overwhelm her with noir- ccurs which could never enter the thoughts or pass the lips of any but the shameless and the abandoned ! And conceive further his describing all this himself, without the slightest indication of reticence or humiliation ! It might seem impossible to go beyond or below this ; yet if there be a lower depth still, that depth has been reached in two of the last novels that have issued from the press, written by two of the most noted writers of the day. Mle et Lui and Lui et Elle bear the names respectively of George Sand and Paul de Musset. They are said to be, and we believe they are, the personal scandalous adventures of the writers, with some coloring, but with little deviation from historic fact, wrought into fiction. Elle et Lui describes the connection of Madame Uudevant (under her noyri de plume of George Sand) with Alfred de Musset, from the lady's point of view, and paints scenes and characters as she would wish them to be believed by the world. Even on her own showing, the story is shocking and revolting enough ; but she paints herself as the loving, clinging, much-en- during, if yielding and guilty, woman ; and her lover as cruel, exacting, capricious, and incurably licentious. This lover, so delineated, — whom every one recognized as Alfred de Musset, a poet and novelist of great merit, — is dead ; and Paul de Musset, not choosing that such a 8* L 178 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. false picture of his brother should f;o forth uncontradicted, and having materials and documents at his command, thought fit to give, also in the form of fiction, Alfred's version of the liaison. Here, as might he expected, tlie colors are reversed : the gentleman is described as all that is amiable, attractive, faithful, and devoted ; while the lady acts throughout as a thoroughly heartless and abandoned creature, though full' of fascination, and not incapable for a time of experiencing an absorbing pas- sion. Which of the parties speaks the truth and which lies, or in what proportion the indisputable falsehood is to be divided between them, it is needless to iniiuire.* But assuredly nothing can be more disgraceful than the things revealed, — except the revelation of them. Prom the popularity, the general agreement, the con- sentaneous tone, both as to character and plot, of the w'orks we have been considering, as well as from the ab- sence of all exposing and protesting criticism, and from much corroborative information that has reached us, it would seem difficult to resist the following conclusions. That illicit liaisons, especially with married women, are, in the upper and the idler classes of France, the rule rather than the exception, and that the exceptions are rare and remarkable : among the hourfjcoisie, Ave believe, the case is different, — they are too busy for a life of dis- sipation and intrigue. That, in the vast majority of \x\- stances, these /t«tso?is have their origin- — not, as among the Italians, in genuine and absorbing passion, nor, as among the Germans, in blended sentimentality and sense, but — in vanity, want of occupation, and love of excite- ment on the part of the men, and in lo"\'e of admiration, and (what is worse) mere love of luxury, on the part of the women, — M'hose suitors furnish those means of ex- travagance which their husbands refuse, — and that this distinction is to be traced to the peculiar character and temperament of the nation. That into these liaisons the men ajipear habitually to import a coarseness and a cruelty, as well as an iinchivalric and ungenerous roughness, iudi- FRENCH FICTION. 179 eating, not so much that they do not appreciate the sacrifice which the woman makes in giving herself to them, as that they do not believe it is any sacrifice at all. In fine, so little respect does there seem to be left for the feelings of wo- men, so little belief in their virtue, so little trust in their sincerity or disinterestedness, — so completely have calculation, luxury, mutual contempt, and mutual mis- trust poisoned the tenderest relation of life and its purest passion, — that the fitting epithet to apply to this phase of French society is not so much " immorality," as hideous and cancerous corruption. We are little disposed to indulge in trite moralities, or rigid censoriousness, or stern condemnations in which is no tenderness for frailty and no mercy for repentance. But surely those who incline to think lightly of sacred ties and leniently of voluptuous indulgence and unli- censed attachments may find a warning in these pictures of a social life where this lenience and levity are univer- sal. They may see there how surely and how rapidly %vant of feeling follows want of principle ; how disbelief in virtue grows out of experience in frailty ; how scanty is the joy to be derived from tlie emotions of love when those emotions are reduced to their mere beggarly material ele- ments, div^orced from the redeeming spirit, and stripped of the concealing and adorning drapery, of fancy and of grace; and at what a fearful cost to heart and soul these feverish and wandering gratifications are purchased, — how poor the article and how terrible the price, — a disenchanted world, a paralyzed and threadbare soul, a past with no sweet and gentle memories, a future with no yearnings and no hopes. It cannot be denied that the prevalence and wide cir- culation of such a popular literature as that of which we have endeavored to portray the more characteristic fea- tures, is a fact both fearful and momentous, whetlier we regard it as an indication or as an influence, — as a faith- ful reflection of the moral condition of the people among whom it flourishes, or as the most pow^erful determining cause of that condition. The more inherent and univer- 180 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. sally diffused excellences and defects of national charac- ter may, ^ve believe, be discerned more truly in the favor- ite dramas and novels than in any other ^Jroductions of the national mind. They show the sort of recreation which is instinctively recurred to when the tension of pursuit and effort is relaxed, — the natural tendency of the unbent bow. They also show the food which is hal)itually presented to the people by those who are familiar with their appetites and tastes, in their most impressible and passively recipient moods. And what justifies us in drawing the most condemnatory and mel- ancholy conclusions from the multiplication and success of the works we have been considering is, that they are characteristic, and not exceptional. They are not the re- past provided by an inferior class of writers for the inter- est and amusement of an inferior class of readers. They form the light reading, the hcUes-lcttres, of the vast major- ity — of the generality, in fact — of educated men and women. They indicate the order of thoughts and fancies to which these habitually and by preference turn, the plots which interest them most, the characters which seem to them most piquant or most familiar, the refiec- tioris which stir their feelings the most deeply, the prin- ciples or sentiments by which their actions are most iisually guided, the virtues they most admire, the vices they most tolerate ; — they reflect, in a word, the daily life and features of themselves, and of the circles in which they live and move. These productions, too, for the most part are written with great power' and beauty, often with as much eleva- tion of sentiment as is compatible with the absence of all strict principle and all definite morality. There is plenty of religion, and much even that is simple, touch- ing, and true ; but it is religion as affection and emotion, — never as guide, governance, or creed. There is some reverence and much gratitude towards God ; but little idea of obedience, sacrifice, or devotion. There is adula- tion and expectation, rather than worship or service. Then, again, there is vast sympathy with the suffering FRENCH FICTION. 181 and the poor, — deep and genuine, if often irrational and extravagant; but it commonly degenerates into senseless animosity towards the rich, lawless hatred of settled in- stitutions, and frantic rebellion against the righteous chain of cause and effect which governs social well-being. There are delineations of rajiturous, irreproachable, almost angelic love ; but some unhallowed memory, or some dis- ordered association, almost always steps in to stain the idol and to desecrate the shrine. There are eloquence, pathos, and fancy in rich profusion ; characters of higli endowment and noble aspiration ; scenes of exquisite ten- derness and chaste affection ; pictures of saintly purity and martyr-like devotion ; — but something theatrical, morbid, and meretricious mingles with and mars the whole. There is every flower of Paradise, " But the trail of the serpent is over them all." The grandest gifts placed at the service of the lowest pas- sions ; the holiest sentiments and the fondest moments painted in the richest colors of the fancy, only to be withered by cynical doubt or soiled by cynical indecency ; the most secret and sacred recesses of the soul explored and mastered, not for reverential contemplation of their beauties and their mysteries, but in order to expose them, with a hideous grin, — naked, sensitive, and shrinking, — to the desecrating sneers of a misbelieving and mocking world : — such is the work which genius must stoop to do, when faith in what is good, reverence for what is pure, and relish for what is natural have died out from a nation's heart ! CHATEAUBPtIA:N'D. aPiEAT men, of the verj first order of greatness, — " the heights and pinnacles of human mind," — are of no country. They are cosmopolitan, not national. They belong not to the Teutonic, or the Anglo-Saxon, or the Italian, or the Gallic race, but to the Human race. They are stamped with the features, rich M'ith the endow- ments, mighty with the power, instinct with the life, not of this or that phase or section of humanity, but of hu- manity itself, in its most unlimited development and its loftiest possibilities. There is no apparent reason why they might not have been born in any one of the nations into whicli the civilized modern world is divided, as well as in anotlier. The universal elements of their charac- ter and their intelligence override and obliterate the special ones. We do not think of Shakespeare and Bacon, of Spinoza and Descartes, of Newton and Gali- leo, of Columbus or Michael Angelo, of Kant or Goethe, as Frenchmen or Englishmen, Germans or Italians, but as MEN, whose capacities and whose achievements are at once the patrimony and the illustration of all peoples and all lands alike. But there are great men of a secondary stature and a more bounded range, — men darkly wise and imperfectly and irregularly great, yet whose greatness cannot be dis- puted, since, in spite of many moral shortcomings and mucli intellectual frailty, they have filled a large space in the world's eye, have done good service and earned higli fame, have notably influenced the actions and the thoughts of their contemporaries, and produced works CHATEAUBRIAND. 183 " which after-times will not willingly let die," — and yet who are so prominently marked with the imj^ress of their age and country, that no one can for a moment fail to recognize their origin. Every page of their writings, ev- ery incident of their career, every power they evince, every weakness they betray, proclaims aloud the Briton or the Frank. And we speak here not only of men of talent, but of men of unquestionable genius too. "Talent," as Sir James Mackintosh well defined it, is " habitual power of execution " : it is of many descriptions ; it may be generated to some extent ; it may be cultivated to almost any extent ; and wdll naturally have a lo- cal stamp and coloring. " Genius " implies a special gift, an innate and peculiar endowment ; Providence, with a mysterious and uncontrollal)le sovereignty, drops the seed into any soil ; it might be expected, therefore, to be purely personal, rather than redolent of time and place. Yet, except in tlie case of those paramount and abnormal Intelligences of whom we have spoken above, men of genius, for the most part, are essentially national and secular, — visibly stamped witli the image and su- perscription of the era in which they lived, and the land which gave them birth. Of this secondary order of great men, — unquestionably a man of genius, unquestionably also and i^ar excellence a Frenchman, and a Frenchman of the nineteenth century, — Chateaubriand was one of the most eminent and the most special. His career, his character, and his writings are M'ell worth the pains of studying. His career ex- tended over the whole of the most momentous and excit- ing epoch of modern history, and was involved in some of its most stirring scenes. He was born in 1768, and died in 1848. He was old enough to feel an interest in the estaljlishment of American Independence ; and he lived to see the United States swell in nuniber from thir- teen to thirty-three, and their statesmen dwindle in ca- pacity from Washington to Polk. He was presented in his eighteenth year to Louis XVI. in the days of his gran- deur at Versailles, and he might have been presented in 184 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. his eightieth year to Louis Napoleon, at the Elysee, as he marcliefl back from exile on his way to the imperial throne. He was a fugitive to England in his youtli, and ambassador to England in his old age. He served Napo- leon, and he served Charles X. He lived through tlie three great moral, political, and social convulsions of mod- ern times, — the revolution of 1789, the revolution of 1830, the revolution of 1848. He was born under feudalism; he died under socialism. He opened his eyes on France wlien she was an ancient and hereditary monarchy ; lie l)cheld her "everything in turn and nothing long"; he lived to see the Second liepublic, and almost to see the Second Empire. His writings, varied in their range, — romantic, religious, polemic, and biographical, — are all peculiar and characteristic, and full of energy and warmth. By the common consent of his countrymen, he is regarded as having carried the poetry of prose composition to a pitch never approached by any one before or since, ex- cept Eousseau ; and in that style of refined acrimony, quiet thrusts wdth polished rapier, and graceful throwing of poisoned epigrammatic javelins, which is so peculiarly French and which Frenchmen so inordinately value, he had confessedly no rival. He was, moreover, a real power in literature : his controversial writings undeniably exercised great influence over political transactions, and his sentimental writings exercised a still wider and more indisputable influence over the taste and tone of the lighter productions of his age. His character, Anally, both in its strength and its weakness, was peculiarly French. His unsociability apart, he might almost be taken as the typical man of his class, time, and country, — greatly exaggerated, however, especially in his defects. A sense of honor, quick, sensitive, and fiery, rather than national or deep ; an hereditary high breeding whicli displayed itself rather in exquisite grace and urbanity of manner than in real chastening of spirit ; a native chivalry of temper and demeanor, but too superficial to render him truly either generous or amiable ; vanity ignobly excessive and absolutely childish ; and egotism CHATEAUBFilAND. 185 carried to a point at which it became quite a crime, and ahiiost a disease ; — such were the prominent features of Chateaubriand, according to every portrait we possess. Of Chateaubriand's early years we know little that is reliable, for we know nothing beyond what he has told us himself. His reminiscences of this period, it is true, oc- cupy quite a sufficient portion of his autobiography ; but the Memoircs d'oaire Toiiihc, in which he records them, though begun when in the prime of life, were so often retouched and altered in later years, when his memory was failing and his imagination was every day growing more lawless and untruthful, and they are, moreover, so uniformly and obviously the production of a writer who sought to discover what was becoming rather than to re- member what was correct, that we can trust their state- ments only when in themselves probable and character- istic. We do not mean to charge him with intentional falsehood in relating the events either of his earlier or later life ; but his fancy was so vivid and his vanity so irritable and insatiable, he had so rooted a conviction that everything connected witli the Vicomte de Chateau- briand must be singular and wonderful, he was so con- stantly en representation both before himself and before the world, he was so full of the most transparent affecta- tions a3 to his own sentiments, — in a word, he was so habitually insincere with himself (whether consciously or unconsciously we cannot pronounce), that we never know, unless we can check his nan'ative from indepen- dent sources, how far we are dealing with fact or fiction. AVe come across instances of this inaccuracy and un- faithfulness in almost every page of his Memoirs ; so that we can proceed only with doubt and caution, mak- ing ample allowance as we go along for the motives which Ave know to have been at work. Francjois-Kene de Chateaubriand was born September 4, 1768, at Saint-Malo in Brittany, — most reluctantly, as he informs us, against his strong desire and in cruel disregard of his most vehement protests. TMie dis- taste for life, which he loses no opportunity of express- 180 LITERARY AND SOCIIAL JUDGMENTS. ing, — and which "wc may well conceive was in a meas- ure genuine, for sellish men and proud men are seldom happy, — manifested itself in liim, we are re([uired to be- lieve, before his birth. He was not the eldest son ; his father wanted a second boy, in order to secure the trans- mission of the family name ; but Chateaubriand was so unwilling to come into the world that he sent four sis- ters bei'ore him, one after another, in the vain hope of quenching his parent's insatiable desire of offspring. " Je fus le dernier de ces dix enfants. II est probable que mes quatres soeurs durent leur existence au desir de mon pere d'avoir son nom assure par I'arrive d'un second gar(jon : — jc re'sistais ; javais unc aversion 'pour la vie" * He was a delicate infant : his life was in some danger, but was spared at the instance of a vow made by his nurse to the patron saint of her village. His way of re- cording this childish peril is so characteristic in the turn of sentiment and expression, that it is worth quoting : " Je n'avais vecu que queh^ues heures, et la pesanteur du tcmjis etait deja marquee sur vion front. Que ne me lais- sait-on mourir ? H entrait dans les conseils de Dieu d'accorder au voeu de I'obscurite et de I'innocence la con- servation des jours quhme vaine rcnommee mcna^ait d'at- teindrc." The father of Chateaubriand was a Breton gentleman of ancient family but decayed fortunes. He had ac- quired a moderate competence himself by a step which in those days indicated much good sense and force of character : he had entered the mercantile marine, made one or two successful voyages, and then settled for some years in the West Indian colonies. As soon as he was in a position of reasonable independence, he returned to his native land, and purchased at Gombourg, near Saint- Malo, an old ancestral estate and chateau ; but the soil was poor, the cliateau dreary, and the site desolate and forlorn. The son has left a most uninviting picture of both the paternal residence and the paternal character, — * In another passage he speaks of " la chambre oil ma ruei'e ininfiigea la vie " (Vol. I. p. 23). CHATEAUBRIAND. 187 the one cold and gloomy, the other severe, silent, pas- sionate, and morose, with an inordinate pride of name and race as his predominating moral feature. In refer- ence to this family pride, \ve must notice one of the first of Chateaubriand's affectations and insincerities. He pretends to despise all such weakness ; he loudly pro- claims the hollowness of all such pretensions ; he stig- matizes them as " odious in his father, ridiculous in his brother, and too manifest even in his nephew " ; and he adds with some naivete, " Je ne suis pas bien siir, malgre mes inclinations republicaines, de m'en etre completement affranchi, bien que je I'aie soigneusement cachee." So far is he, however, from being either free from this weak- ness or able to hide it, that he betrays it in his every page. He loses no occasion of enumerating his ances- tral glories and connections ; he describes with irrepres- sible self-glorification his entering the royal carriage and hunting with the king, — privileges only granted to those of undoubted noble birth ; he devotes a whole chapter to his pedigree ; he returns to the subject again and again ; wdien his father dies, he gives an extract from the mor- tuary register detailing in full all his titles and formali- ties ; he assures us that " if he inherited the infatuation of his father and his brother, " he could easily prove his descent from the Dukes of Bretajjne, the interminciling of his blood with that of the royal family of England ; and he adds a long note, with further particulars and pieces jitstificatives, at the end of his Memoirs. And then he descends to the unworthy affectation of apolo- gizing for tliese 'tieillcs viiseres' and 'puerilcs recitations^ on the ground tliat they are given for the sake of his neph- ews, " who think more of such matters than he does," and in order to explain the dominant passion of his father. " Quant a moi" (he says), "je ne me glorifie ni ne me plains de I'ancienne ou de la nouvelle societe. Si, dans la premiere, j'etais le chevalier ou le vicomte de Chateaubriand, dans la seconde je suis Francois de Cha- teaubriand ; jc i^refere mon nom a nion titre." The young inheritor of all these past and future glories 1H8 IJTKItAIiY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. fiiifrcirod from a defective education and a neglected cliild- liDud. n«! passed sonrje j)ortions of interrupted years at the Kcniinuries of Dol, Jiennes, and Dinan, successively, Ijcfore wiiicli jxsriod lie siHjnis to iiave sjient liis time in \vand(!rin;^' idon;,' tint wild slions f)f J'rittjmy, f)r j)layinfi; \viLli the- villa;i;(! urchins of Saint-Mido. Jle ntiul iitf'ully, but learnt not hin;^' tIiorf)u,i,dily. JI(! gained the admira- tion of his instructors, he t(!lls us, on account of his sin<,Mi- lar memory for words, — it seems to liave been liis one s])ecial faculliy in youth ; hut lie arids characteristically, " OiK! thinj^ humiliates mo in reference to this: memory is often the endowment of fools; it belon^'S usually to lujavy minds, rcmihtred yet more j)ond(!rous l)y the ha^'^^aj^e with ^which they are oveiloadcid." ]Ie actually feels ashamed oi' poss('Ssin<; a good memory because lie cannot liavc it all to hiinsiilf, but must share the endowment with un<^drted men! The remainder of his youth was ])ass(!d principally in his ung<;nial home at (.'(unliourg, lost in idlciKiss and r(!veri(!S, roaming among the woods, gazing at sunsc^ts, building castles in the air, and indul- ging in those vague, semi-erotic, aemi-ethereal fancies, so common to imaginative minds at the o])ening of life ; but of whi(;h — full of his notion that everything relating to liim was anf)malous and uni(pie — lu; says: " I do not know if the. history of th(! human heart offers another cxam[)le of this sort of thing." His sister Lucilc, who seems to have Ixumi a charming person, was his sole com- panion and comfort in this iingcsnial and un])rofitable life. J^^ven with her it was inelancholy entuigh ; without her it would have b(!en insu])i)ortable. It nourished and en- ri(;he(l his ]»oeti(;a.l imagination, beyond (pu'stion ; but it nouiish(!d and consolidated all his moral failings at the SiuiK! time, — \\\n J'nrtinrhr, and somln'e humor, his unaiiii- abl(> egotism, his slavery to ])assion and to faiu^y, and his normal attitude of self-study, self-wonder, and self-wor- shij). His father rose at four o'clock, summer and winter:' and his harsh voice calling for his valet nssounded through th(! house. At noon the iamily asscMiibhid I'or dinner in the great liall, previous to which hour they worked or CHATEAUBRIAND. 1 89 studied ia their own rooms, or were supposed to do so. Alter dinner tlie fatlier went to shoot, or fish, or look after liis farm; the mother went to Jier oratoiy; the daugliter to lier room and lier tajnHScric ; and the son to tlie woods, or to his hooks and dreams. At eij^dit o'chjck th(!y sup])ed ; then the father shot owls, and the rest of the i'amily looked at the stars, till ten o'clock, when they retired to rest. " Tho evcnin^^s of autumn and winter were public duty was entirely absent." 2C-4 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. real. There is only one great object in this world that de- Kcrves our efforts ; that is, the good of humanity As I advance in life, I see it more and more from that point of view which I used to fancy belonged to early youth, viz., as a thing of very mediocre worth, valuable only as far as one can employ it in doing one's duty, in serving men, and in taking one's fit place among them. How cold, small, and sad life would become if, by the side of this every-day woi-ld, so full of cowardice and selfishness, the human mind could not build for itself another, in which generosity, courage, virtue, in a w^ord, may breathe at ease! .... Ah !" (he concludes) "que je voudrais que la Providence me pr^sentat une occasion d'em- ployer a faire de bonnes et grandes choses, quelques piirils qu'elle y attachut, ce feu interieur que je sens au dedans de moi, et qui ne sait ou trouver qui I'alimente." A quarter of a century later, about two years before his death, he writes to a friend who had dissuaded him from spending too much of his time iu the solitude of a country life : — " You know that my most settled principle is, that there is no period of a man's life at which he is entitled to rest ; and that effort out of one's self, and still more above one's self, is as necessary in age as in j-outh, — nay, even more necessary. Man in this world is like a traveller who is always walking towards a colder region, and who is therefore obliged to be more active as he goes farther north. The great malady of the soul is cold. And iu order to counteract and combat this formidable illness, he must keep up the activity of his mind not only b}' Avork, but by contact with his fellow-men and with the world. Eetirement from the great conflicts of the world is desirable no doubt for those whose strength is on the decline; but absolute retirement, away from the stir of life, is not desirable for any man, nor at any age." It is always extremely interesting to knoAv the estimate formed of mankind in general by those who have studied them profoundly as well as acted with them in the. most trying relations of life. Tocqueville's opinion of his fellow-men was indulgent, but not high. When a young man, he tried to love them, he says, but M-ithout much success. " I like mankind ; but I constantly meet indi- M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 265 vicluals who repel and disgust me by the meanness of their nature. It is my daily effort to guard against a universal contempt for my fellow-men. I can only succeed by a minute and severe analysis of myself ; the result of which is, that I am inclined, as a rule, rather to condemn men's intelligence than their hearts." In 1840, when immersed in public life, he says to Stoffels, " It is a sad side of hu- manity that politics uncovers. We may say, without making any exception, that nothing there is either thoroughly pure or thoroughly disinterested ; nothing really generous, nothing hearty or spontaneous. There is no youth, even among the youngest ; and something cold, selfish, and premeditated may be detected even in the most apparently passionate proceedings." And, as the summary result of his experience, he speaks thus to a somewhat misanthropic friend : — " You make out humanity worse than it is. I have seen many countries, studied many men, mingled in many public transactions ; and the result of my observation is not what you suppose. Men in general are neither very good nor very bad ; they are simply mediocre. I have never closely examined even the best without discovering faults and frailties invis- ible at first. I have always in the end found among the worst certain elements and holding-points of honesty. There are two men in every man : it is childish to see only one ; it is sad and unjust to look only at the other Man, with all his vices, his weaknesses, and his virtues, this strange mixture of good and bad, of low and lofty, of sincere and depraved, is, after all, the object most deserving of study, interest, pity, affection, and admiration to be found upon this earth ; and since we have no angels, we cannot attach ourselves to any- thing greater or worthier than our fellow-creatures." Our space is limited, and as we have been chiefly anxious to display the character and inner nature of Alexis de Tocqueville as revealed in these volumes, we have been obliged to pass over nearly all his judgments and reflections on the events of his day both at home and abroad, though these are everywhere replete with interest and instruction. If we had been able, we should have 12 ■2G(J LITERAKY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. wished to cite his views as to the change in the literary temper of his country ; as to tlie moral retrogression since the epoch of 1789 ; his vivid picture, in a letter to Madame Swetchine, of the transformation of the young conscript from the peasant into the soldier, and vice versa; his profound remarks on the mischief which in France re- ligion has always suffered from the alliance hetween the Church and the Government ; and his sound and sagacious notions as to the peculiar perils and difficulties of our Indian empire. But for all these we must refer our readers to the volumes themselves, of which an English translation by a most competent hand is about to ajipear. We must, however, be allowed to extract his remarks as to the " political selfishness of England," and the singular impressions on this head which prevail in every part of the world, and which so friendly and acute an observer as Tocqueville could not help avowing that he shared. He had noticed what few others on the Continent seem yet to have perceived : — "The gradual change which has come over the English temperament, which is daily becoming more pacific, less irri- table, and less proud, than at any previous period of modem history. This I believe to be only the result of the grand rev- olution which has been at work there, slowly indeed, but as in'csistibly as everywhere else, — the predominance of the middle classes over the aristocracy, and of the industrial element over the agricultural and real-property one. "Will this be a good, or an evill Your grandchildren will discuss this question. A society calmer and duller, more tranquil and less heroic, — such no doubt will be the spectacle for our suc- cessors." But in 1856 he writes to M. de Beaumont : — "Mme. Grote nous envoie quelquefois des joumaux anglais qui font ma joie. lis out une^espece de naivete ravissante dans leur passion nationale. A leurs yeux, les ennemis de TAngleterre sont tout naturellement des coquins, et ses amis de grands hommes. La seule 6chelle de la moralite humaiue qu'ils comiaissent est la." M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 267 And to Mrs. Grote herself he says : — *'Aux yeux des Anglais, la cause dont le succes est utile h. I'Augleterre est toujours la cause de la justice. L'humme ou le gouveruement qui sert les interets de I'Angleterre a toutcs sortes de qualites, et celui qui la nuit, toutes sortes de defauts ; de sorte qu'il semblerait que le criterium de rhonnete, du beau, et du juste doit etre cherche dans ce qui favorise ou ce qui blesse I'interet anglais En France, on a fait souvent en politique des choses utiles et injustes, mais sans que I'utilite cacLat au public I'injustice. Nous avons meme quelquefois employe de grands coquins, mais sans leur attribuer la moindre vertu. Je ne suis pas bien sur qu'au point de vue moral cela vaut mieux, mais elle montre du moins uue faculte plus graude de I'esprit." Finally, he calls the attention of Mr. Senior to the pain- ful fact that the Indian crisis, even more than our suffer- ings in the Crimean war, showed how little sympathy and liking for England can be found among foreign nations. Our discomfiture in that fearful conflict, he observes, could have profited no one and no cause but tliat of bar- barism ; yet it was generally wished for. . No doul)t, he says, this universal sentiment was partly attributable to malice and envy, but also in part to a less discreditable reason, — " to a conviction felt by all people in the world that England never considers others except from the self- ish point of view of her own grandeur ; that all sympa- thetic sentiment for u-hat is not herself is more absent in her than in any nation of modern times ; that she never notices what passes among foreigners, what they think, feel, suffer, or do, except in reference to the advantage tliat England may draw therefrom, — occupied in reality only with herself, even when she seems most occupied with them. There is certainly some exaggeration in this notion, but I cannot say there is not much truth in it." It is well, no doubt, that we should be aware what harsh things are tliought of us, and especially that we should hear them from a man so candid and so fair, and usually so well inclined to admire and love England, as 268 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. Tocqueville assuredly was ; * for it is a proof that, how- ever unjust the accusation, we must have given some grounds for it by our language and our manners, if not by our actions. But as to the chaj-ge itself, we must avow our conscientious conviction that it is monstrously over- drawn, if not utterly unfounded, and as coming from a Frenchman absolutely astounding. We may readily ad- mit that England has often done unjust actions, and has shown curious ingenuity in blinding herself to their in- justice ; we may even allow that, like other nations, she is disposed to judge her friends and servants more lenient- ly than her foes, — to " Be to their faults a little blind; Be to their virtues very kind " ; — we may confess, with shame, that the language of our statesmen, especially of late, when they have had occasion to explain or justii'y the measures of their foreign policy, has often been calculated to give an air of truth to this accusation of unsocial selfishness ; and that, if we could consent to be judged by the coarse and ferocious manifes- toes of Mr. Bright, we should not have a word to urge in our defence. But tliat England in these respects has been worse than other nations, that she has not, more particularly during tlie last half-century, been much better than other nations, that she has not of late years been the one Power M'hich has habitually proclaimed the principles and held the language of generous sympathy and unself- ish public morality, — we must emphatically and deliber- ately deny. She has hailed the progress of civilization and prosperity everywhere ; she has expressed the warmest appreciation of the efforts and aspirations of liberty wherever they have broken forth ; she has been the first to denounce the acts of injustice and oppression occasion- ally exercised by her own agents and proconsuls ; and * His admiration of our country ^vas earnest and sincere. On his return from England in 1857, he \vrote to M. de Corcelle : " C'esth^ plus gi-aud spectacle qu'il y ait dans le monde, quoique tout n'y soit pas grand. II s'y rencontre surtout des choses entierement inconnues dans le reste de I'Exirope et dont la vue m'a soulage." M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 269 she has steadily opposed and protested against the grasp- ing and intriguing iniquities of France, the cynical im- morality and selfishness of whose public conduct has been written in sunbeams on every page of recent history. We need look no further than Italy to be able to form a comparative judgment of the relative capacity for disin- terested sympathy displayed by the two nations. lie- publican France, without the faintest vestige of a jusb pretext, sent an army to crush the republican liberties of Eome, within eighteen months after she had turbulently seized her own ; she replaced the worst government of Europe on its throne by force, and has acted as its shirri ever since ; she did this simply and avowedly to prevent Austria from gaining additional influence in Italy by forestalling her proceeding ; and, we grieve to write it, she committed this enormous and unblushing crime while Alexis de Tocqueville was Minister for Foreign Affairs. Italy has now recovered her liberties, thanks to Imperial ratlier than French assistance ; she has formed a united country under a constitutional monarch ; she bids fair to be in time free, happy, and progressive. What does England say to the prospect ? — she is wild with disinter- ested enthusiasm and delight. What does France say ? Why, all French publicists or statesmen, with scarcely a single exception besides the Emperor, — Liberal, Orleanist, Despotic, Legitimist, Eepublican, Catholic, Protestant, — are grinding their teeth with dishonorable envy and more dishonorable rage. "It ivont suit France," is their unan- imous and shameful cry, " to have a great and indepen- dent Italy beside her ; she may become our rival ; and what title has Italy to be free while we are whining or fawning under despotism ? " We must draw to a close. The great charm of these volumes, as we have already said, lies in the complete and distinct picture they present of the real nature and being of the man, without drapery and without disguise. No man was ever more worth seeing in this unreserved disclosure than Tocqueville, and few men's characters could bear it so weU. Every fresh revelation of his 270 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. most intimate sentiments and thoughts only serves to make us love him better and admire him more. He was not exactly a perfect character, and yet it was impossible to wisli anything changed or anything away. You might imagine something more absolutely faultless, but you could not imagine anything more attractive or more noble. Perhaps his most unique and characteristic distinction was that, while perfectly simple, he was at the same time unfailingly high-minded. You felt at once that no sen- timent, mean, ungenerous, prejudiced, or shallow, covld gain entrance into liis mind or find utterance through his lips. A profound moral earnestness pervaded every- thing he did, or thought, or wrote. He could not sepa- rate either public from private morality, or patriotic from personal affection. With all that delicate chivalry of honor which belonged to the purest of the old nohlcsse, he blended a far loftier code and a far sounder judgment as to the truly right and good than the old nohlcsse ever dreamed of. He threw his whole soul into both his philosophic investigations and his political career. He loved his country as he loved his friends ; its misfor- tunes grieved him like a domestic calamity ; its crimes and follies weighed down his spirits like the sin and dis- honor of a brother or a son ; the clouds and dangers that hung over its future haunted him like a nightmare. Partly from this cause, and partly from a delicate organ- ization and frequent suffering, he was often sad, and at times melancholy almost to despair. His intellect was sensitive and restless in a remarkable degree for one so sober and moderate in all his views ; work, actual labor for some great aim, was absolutely necessary to his com- fort and tranquillity, wliile, alas, it was often too much for his strength. To him everything in life was serious ; he felt too keenly and he thought too deeply not to be habitually grave, though his elegant taste, cultivated in- telligence, and natural sense of humor prevented this gravity from ever becoming oppressive, except to the most frivolous and shallow minds. The grace of his manner and the charm of his conversation were,. by uni- M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 271 versal admission, unrivalled in this day ; Mdiile to the in- tercourse of daily lil'e the exquisite polish of his spirit, mingled with a most affectionate and caressing disposi- tion, lent a fascination that was strangely irresistible. In the midst, too, of all his rare refinement and maturity of Avisdom there was a fund of enthusiasm which gave re- lief and animation to the whole ; and there were few changes in France whicli he deplored more than the cold and passionless materialism which seemed to have ab- sorbed all classes and all ages. In 1858, he describes a visit which he paid to an enthusiastic old Benedictine of ninety-six, who had shared in all the hopes and efforts of 1789 ; and then goes on to say to jM. Freslon^ his cor- respondent : — " J'ai deja remarque qu'en France la quantite de cfdorique intellectuel et moral etait en raison inverse du uombre des an- nees. On est plus froid a mesure qu'ou est plus jeuue ; et la temperature semble s'elever avec I'age. Des hommes comme vous et moi paraissent deja des enthousiastes bien ridicules aux sages de dix-huit ans. Suivant cette loi nouvelle, moti centeuuire devait etre tout feu. Et il letait en effet quand il parlait des esperances de 89 et de la grande cause de la liberte. Je lui ai demandc s'il trouvait la France bien chaugee sous le rapport moral. * Ah ] monsieur,' m'a-t-il repondu, 'je crois rever quand je me rappelle I'etat des esprits dans ma jeunesse, la vivacite, la sincerite des opinions, le respect de soi-meme et de ropiniou publique, le desinte'ressement dans la passion publique. Ah ! monsieur (ajoutaitil en me serrant les mains avec I'efFusion et I'emphase du xviii™* siecle), on avail alors une cause : on n'a phis que des interets. II y avait des liens entre les hommes : il n'y eu a plus. II est bien triste, mon- sieur, de survivre a sou pays.'" "We are naturally desirous to know the sentiments of a man at once so good, so wise, and so free, on religion, — that great matter on which w^ise and free and good men differ so marvellously, if not so hopelessly. Neither the memoir nor the correspondence is very specific on this head. This much, however, appears clearly, that the subject was one that occupied his intensest thought. 272 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. and that he lield faith to be a possession of first neces- sity to individuals as to states. He often laments the indifference and infidelity of his countrymen, and their apparent inability to do as Enj^dand had succeeded in doing, — to unite belief and liberty. Among memo- randa and reflections written early in life and found among his papers, is the following: "II n'y a pas de verity absolue," and a little further on, " Si j'c'tais charge de classer les miseres humaines, je le ferais dans cette ordre : 1°. Les maladies ; 2°. La mort ; 3°. Le doute." Many years afterwards, when he was about forty-five years old, he writes to M. de Corcelle : " Je ne sais d'ail- leurs si les dernieres circonstances dans laquelle je me suis trouve, la gravite plus grande que I'age donne a la pensee, la solitude dans laquelle je vis, ou toute autre cause que je ne sais pas, agissent sur mon ame et y pro- duisent un travail interieur; la verite est que je n'ai ja- mais plus sent! le besoin de la base e'ternelle, du terrain solide sur lequel la vie doit etre batie. Le doute m'a toujours paru le plus insupportable des maux de ce monde, et je I'ai constamment juge pire que le raort." From this doubt, however, which he so deprecated, it was impossible for a spirit at once so searching and so honest as his ever quite to free itself; but it remained speculative merely, and though it might disturb his re- ligious creed, it never for one moment weakened his re- ligious sentiment : in all that is essential, eternal, and indisputable, no sincerer Christian ever lived and died. In this, as in other matters, Tocqueville grew more tran- quil with years, if not more happy. Serenity, indeed, could never be the portion upon earth of a temperament so tremblingly sensitive as his ; and his later letters are filled with the most touching expressions of the growing sadness which gathered over him as he found himself be- coming more and more isolated in feeling and opinion, in aspirations and in aims, from most of those around him. "What his contemporaries worshipped and followed had no dignity or charms for him ; he despised what they desired ; he cherished what they had neglected and for- M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 273 saken ; they seemed hurrying down a steep incline of which he saw the inevitable abyss, but could not induce them to listen to his warnings. The past, containing so much that was beautiful and noble, was daily becoming more dead, more remote, and more forgotten ; and in the immediate future, so far as human eye could penetrate, no dawn of hope was to be discerned. Much as we mourn for his untimely loss, deeply as we grieve over his empty place and his unfinished work, we can well be- lieve that he would himself have discovered some conso- lation for all that he was leaving in the thought that he was " taken away from the evil to come. " He died peaceably at Cannes, on the 16th of April, 1859 ; the purest, noblest, truest gentleman it was ever our privi- lege to know. Over no death-bed might the lofty lan- guage of Tacitus be more fitly spoken : " Si quis piorum manibus locus ; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum cor- pore extinguuntur magnse animse, placide quiescas : — nosque, domum tuam, ab infirmo desiderio et muliebri- bus lamentis, ad contemplationem virtutum tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri neque plangi fas est ; admira- tione te potius et, si natura suppeditet, emulatione deco- remus." 12* WHY AEE "WO^IEN EEDUNDANT ? A STATE of society so mature, so elaborate, so highly organized as ours cannot fail to abound in painful and complicated problems. One after another these ex- cite attention. The philosopher seeks to solve them ; the philanthropist endeavors to relieve the suffering, and the moralist to cure the evil, they involve or imply. There is enough, alas, in the various forms of wrong, of error, and of wretchedness which multiply around us, not only to make our hearts bleed, but to bewilder our understanding, to disturb our conscience, to shame our indolence and ig- norance, and almost to stagger and to strain our faith ; and enough also to afford ample occupation to that vast amount of restless, piying, energetic, impatient benevo- lence, which is perhaps the most remarkable, as it is cer- tainly the most hopeful, feature of this age. It would seem as if, in this respect, " our strength was equal to our clay," and our resources to the work wliich lies before us : all that appears necessary is, that the diagnosis should be complete before the medicine is administered, and that the physician should be sure of his prescription before the surgeon begins to operate. For ourselves, we can say that we never " despaired of the Eepublic " ; we have never done the Creator the M'rong of doubting (to use an expression we once heard from Dr. Chalmers) " that the world is so constituted that if we were morally right, we should be socially and ph>^sically happy " ; we are pro- foundly convinced that, of all tlie evils which oppress civilization and all the dangers which menace it, none lie beyond the reach of liuman sagacity to analyze, or of hu- man resolve and compassion to avert and cure. If we WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT] 275 thought otherwise, there would be little joy in living, and little comfort in looking forth on life. The sensualist might revel in the pleasures which wealth or toil placed within his reach, till repetition brought early satiety and disgust ; the lover miglit bask in his brief spring and sunshine of fruition ; the human mill-horse might tread his weary rounds in the dull gray apathy of selfishness ; tlie ambitious man might stun his nobler thoughts in the fierce struggle for power that could then be wielded for no hallowing end ; but the statesman worthy of his grand vocation, and the thinker capable of rising to the lieiuht of the 2;reat arQ;ument before him, would find both O - .... their occupation and their inspiration gone. The British world — philanthropic as well as poetical — takes up only one thing at a time ; or rather, and usu- ally, only a fragment of a thing. It discovers an island, and proceeds to reason on it and deal with it as such ; and it is long before it learns that the supposed island is only the promontory of a vast continent. Woman is tlie subject which for some time back our benevolence has been disposed to take in hand, fitfully and piecemeal. We have been grieved, startled, shocked, perplexed, baf- fled ; still, with our usual activity, we have been long at work, beating about the bush, ilying at this symptom, attacking that fragment, relieving this distress, denounc- ing that abomination. First it was the factory girls ; then the distressed needlewomen ; then aged and decayed governesses ; latterly Magdalens, in esse or m futurum. The cry of " Woman's Rights " reached us chiefly from America, and created only a faint echo here. IVe have occupied ourselves more with " Woman's Mission," and " Woman's Employment " ; and, as usual, have been both more practical and more superficial than our neighbors across the Channel and across the Atlantic : but the " con- dition of women," in one form or another, — their wants, their woes, their difficulties, — have taken possession of our thoughts, and seem likely to occupy us busily and painfully enough for some time to come. And well they may ; for not only do the mischiefs, anomalies, and falsi- 276 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. ties in tliat condition unveil tliemselves more and more as we study the sultject, but they are, we believe, every day actually on the increase. The problem, which is so generally though so dimly perceived, and which so many are spasmodically and am- bitiously bent on solving, when looked at witli a certain degree of completeness, — with an endeavor, that is, to bring together all the scattered phenomena which are usually only seen separately and in detail, — appears to resolve itself into this : that tliere is an enormous and increasing number of single women in the nation, a num- ber quite disproportionate and quite abnormal ; a number -which, positively and relatively, is indicative of an un- wholesome social state, and is both productive and prog- nostic of much wretchedness and wrong. There are hundreds of thousands of women — not to speak more largely still — scattered through all ranks, but propor- tionally most numerous in the middle and upper classes, who have to earn their own living, instead of spending and husbanding the earnings of men ; who, not having the natural duties and labors of wives and mothers, liave to carve out artificial and painfully sought occupations for themselves ; who, in place of completing, sweetening, and embellishing the existence of others, are compelled to lead an independent and incomplete existence of their own. In the manufacturing districts thousands of girls are working in mills and earning ample wages, instead of performing, or preparing and learning to perform, the functions and labors of domestic life In great cities, thousands, again, are toiling in the ill-paid victicr of sempstresses and needlewomen, wasting life and soul, gathering the scantiest subsistence, and surrounded by the most overpowering and insidious temptations. As we go a few steps higher in the soci^il scale, we find two classes of similar abnormal existences : women, more or less well educated, spending youth and middle life as governesses, living laboriously, yet perhaps not uncom- fortably, but laying by nothing, and retiring to a lonely and destitute old age ; and old maids, with just enough WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 277 income to live upon, but wretched and deteriorating, their minds narrowing, and their hearts withering, because they have nothing to do, and none to love, cherish, and obey. A little furtlier upwards, how many do we daily see, how many have we all known, who are raised by fortune above the necessity of caring for their own subsist- ence, but to whom employment is a necessity as imperi- ous as to the milliner or the husbandman, because only employment can fill the dreary void of an unshared ex- istence ; beautiful lay nuns, involuntary takers of the veil, who pine for work, who beg for occupation, who pant for interest in life, as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, and dig for it more earnestly than for hid treasures. With most women, probably, this phase comes at some epoch in their course ; with numbers, alas, it never passes into any other. Some rush to charity, and do partial good or much mischief; some find solace in literary interests and work, and these, though the fewest, are perhaps the most fortunate of all ; some seek in the excessive development of the religious affections a pale ideal substitute for the denied human ones, — a substitute of which God forbid that we should speak slightingly, but which is seldom wholly satisfactory or wholly safe. Lastly, as we ascend into the highest ranks of all, we come upou crowds of the same unfulfilled destinies, — the same existences manquees, — women who have gay society, but no sacred or sufficing home, whose dreary round of pleasure is yet sadder, less remunerative, and less satisfying than the dreary round of toil trodden by their humble sisters. The very being of all these vari- ous classes is a standing proof of, and protest against, that " something wrong," on which we have a, few words to say, — that besetting problem which, like the sphinx's, society must solve or die. It is because we think there is a tendency in the pub- lic mind at this conjuncture to solve it in the wrong way, to call the malady by a M'rong name, and to seek in a MTong direction for the cure, that we take up our pen. In all our perplexities and disorders, — in social perplex- 278 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. itie.s and disorders more perhaps than in any others, — there is one golden rnlc, if we will Init apply it, which will suit great things as well as small, which is equally sound for all ages and all climes, — consult Natvre ; question her honestly and boldly, with no foregone deter- mination as to what answer she shall give, with no sneak- ing intention to listen only to a fragment of her oracle, or to put a forced construction on her Mords. Thus interrogated, be confident that she will give forth no mistaken or ambiguous reply. Nature, as soon as Ave have learned to love her and to trust her, and to under- stand her language, is always right, and most commonly speaks intelligibly enough. In our difficulties, then, let us consult her; in the remedies we apply let us study her, assist her operations, return to her paths. Let us . search out the original causes of social evils and errors, so that we may not counteract them, but undo them and retrace them. The mischiefs wrought by one departure from the dictates and the laws of nature, do not endeavor to cure or compensate by another. Shun, as the most fatal of blunders, the notion that the first egarcmcnt can be rectified by a second. Above all, be very slow to accept any anomalies or sufferings as necessary or irreme- diable, and to treat them with the anodynes prescril;ed by hopelessness or incapacity. Palliatives and narcotics are for ineradicable and inevitable maladies : Nature knows few such in the physical, fewer still in the politi- cal or the social world. When we have discovered wherein we have erred and why we are diseased, and have stepped back into the honest and the healthy way, and cut off the source of the disorder, — when the fons et origo mali has been thus dried up, — then, and not till then, may Ave proceed to relieve the symptoms, and mitigate the pain, and countervail the mischiefs produced by the wide- spread and loHg-fostered disease, Avith a hearty and en- lightened zeal, — provided only Ave are sedulously Avatch- ful that the lenitives Ave administer shall not be of a character to interfere Avith the remedy Ave have discovered and prescribed. WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 279 Now what does Nature say in reference to the case before us ? By dividing and proportioning the sexes, by the instincts which lie deepest, strongest, and most unan- imously in the heart of humanity at large in all times and amid all people, by the sentiments which belong to all healthy and unsophisticated organizations even in our own complicated civilization, marriage, the union of one man with one woman, is unmistakably indicated as the despotic law of life. This is the rule. "We need not waste words in justifying the assumption. As the French proverb says, "On ne cherche pas a.prouver la lumiere." But Nature does more than this : she not only proclaims the rule, " she distinctly lays down the precise amount and limits of the exception. In all coun- tries of which we have any accurate statistics, tliere are rather more women than men ; the excess varying from two to five per cent. ^Vllerever, from accidental or arti- ficial causes, this proportion is much disturbed, the sad- dest results ensue. Whether this very moderate excess points towards polygamy or celibacy is a question which on these bare facts alone might be open to controversy. In either case, the limit of the divergence permissible from the general law is definitely fixed. In arguing be- fore an Emrlish audience we need not discuss the former supposition ; here, at least, we shall not be accused of going one step beyond the boundaries of safe and modest inference, when we assume that the numerical fact we have mentioned points out the precise percentage of wo- men whom Nature designed for single life, and that wherever this percentage is materially exceeded, the dic- tates of Nature have been neglected, silenced, or set at naught. No doubt there are exceptional organizations in both sexes ; and these exceptions are likely to become more numerous in proportion as civilization grows more com- plex and artificial. There are men who, from defective instincts,, or from abnormal cerebral development, or from engrossing devotion to some jealous and exclusive pur- suit, pass through life alike undisturbed by the passion 280 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. and unsoftened by the sentiment of love. To a few, cel- ibacy is a necessity ; to a few, probably, a natural and easy state ; to yet fewer, a high vocation. There are wo- men, though we believe they are more rare than any other natural anomalies, who seem utterly devoid of the fibre feminin, to whom Nature never speaks at all, or at least speaks not in her tenderest tones. There are others too passionately fond of a wild independence to be passion- ately fond of any mate ; and to such single life may spare the endurance and the infliction of much misery. There are some who seem made for charitable uses ; whose heart overflows with all benevolent emotions, but the character of whose affection is rather diffusive than concentrated, — ideal old maids, — old maids ah ovo. There are women again — and these are sometimes, though but seldom, of a very high order — in whom the spiritual so predominates over the other elements of their being, that human ties and feelings seem pale and poor by the side of the divine ; and to such mamage Avould appear a profanation, and would assuredly be a mistake. But of those who fancy that this is their vocation, the vast majority commit a fearful and a fatal error, and awake at last to find it so ; and to those who are really thus called, the voice, we suspect, comes often er from a narrow intelligence or a defective organization than from the loftier aspirings of the soul, v Lastly, there are wo- men who are really almost epicene ; whose brains are so analogous to those of men, that they run nearly in the same channels, are capable nearly of the same toil, and reach nearly to the same heights ; women not merely of genius (for genius is often purely and in- tensely feminine), but of hard, sustained, effective 2wii:cr ; women who live in and by their intelligence alone, and who are objects of admiration, but never of tenderness, to the other sex. Such are rightly and naturally single ; but they are abnormal and not jierfect natures. The above classes — and it is impossible to say how few individuals they honestly comprise ^\•llen all are WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT] 281 added together — constitute the natural cdihaics among the female sex ; to all others who go through life unmar- ried celibacy is unnatural, even though it may in one sense be voluntary. Hundreds of women remain single in our distorted civilization because they have never been asked at all. Thousands remain single because the offers they have- received threatened to expose them to privations and sacrifices which they shrank from even more than from celibacy. Thousands more,- because one abortive love in the past has closed their hearts to every other sentiment ; or because they have waited long years in persistent faith and silent hope for that one special love which never came ; or because ambition deluded them into setting their claims higher than fate or fortune was prepared to realize. But we are satisfied that no one whose experience of life has been large, whose in- sight into life has been deep, and whose questionings of life have been honest, will demur to our assertion that the women who adopt a single life from positive (not relative) choice, — we do not say from preference, but from love, — who deliberately resolve upon celibacy as that which they like for itself, and not as a mere escape from the lottery of marriage, — will not in their combined numbers exceed, if they even reach, that three or four per cent, for whom, as statistics show us, Nature has provided no exclusive partners. The r esidue — the large excess over this proportion — who remain unmarried, constitute the prohlevi to he solved, the evil and anomaly to he C2cred. Without affecting an accuracy of detail which, where figures are concerned, is always ostentatious and usually perplexing, the law which determines the proportional numbers of the sexes may be thus succinctly stated : There are usually about 104 or 105 males born to every 100 females ; but as mortality among males at all ages exceeds that of females, the number of the latter actually living is always greater than the number of the former. In countries wliere the natural proportion has not been materially disturbed by emigration, immigration, deso- 282 LTTERAKY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. lating or prolonged wars, or other artificial caiises, the excess of females would appear to be about two per cent.* In Great Britain, to wliicli we shall in future confine our attention, tlio actual excess is above ilircc per cent, there being 103.3 females actually living for every 100 males, a proportion, however, which has unquestional^ly been enhanced by emigration. But as in the earlier years of life the p]»oj)ortion is in the other direction, the excess of grown women over grovm men is much more than tliree per cent. Between the ages of twenty and sixty years it is about five and a half per cent, and- after that still larger : so that after twenty years of age Ave may state broadly that about 106 women are to be found for eveiy 100 men. Now, if we are correct in assuming (as we believe "sve are) that in a thoroughly natural, sound, and satisfactory state of society, all women, as a rule, above twenty years of age — except the redundant six per cent for ivhovi equivalent men do not exist here — would be married,-}" then the number (over six per cent) who are single may be taken as the measure of our departure from that healthy and prosperous condition. The proportion of women above twenty years of age, then, who nuist and ovglit to be single being six per cent, the actual pro - portion who cire single is thirty ^?f?' cent. According to the Registrar-General, "Out of every 100 females of * The following table is given in the Supplement to the Report of the Statistical Congress •which met in Paris, and may be regarded as approximately correct for five out of the seven cases : England (1S51) . . . 103.29 females to 100 males. France ,, • • • 101. OS ,, ,, " Turkey (1S44) . . . 101.62 „ ,, Austria (1840) . . • . 102.09 „ Prussia (1849) . . . 100.07 „ Russia (1855) . . . 101.60 ,, ,, United States (1850) . . 95.02 ,, ,, t This is ajiparently a perfectly legitimate assumption ; since the number of women who will marry before their twentieth year may be set off against those who voluntarily defer their marriage altogether. Even in England, the country par excellence of late marriages, two and a half per cent of the females between fifteen and twenty yeare of age are married. WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 283 twenty years of age and upwards, fifty-seven are wives, thirteen are widows, and thirty are spinsters." * To reduce proportlo7is to actual numbers, and thus bring the facts more clearly before our readers' minds, we will quote another statement of the Eegistrar-General. There were in England and Wales, in 1851, 1,248,000 women in the prime of life, i. e. between the ages of twenty and forty years, who were unmarried, out of a total number of rather less than 3,000,000. According to our assumption, there ought only to have been 150,000 (or five per cent) in that condition, which would leave 1,100,000 women in the best and most attractive period of life, who must be classed as unnaturally, if not all unintentionally, single. There is no need, however, to place either figures or inferences in too strong a light; and as unquestionably many women do marry between the ages of twenty and thirty years, we may perhaps re- duce the number of those who are spinsters, in conse- quence of social disorders or anomalies of some sort, and not from choice, to about 750,000, or three quarters of a million, — a figure large enough in all conscience.- "We have now to consider to what causes this startling anomaly is to be traced, and by what means it may be cured; for as we premised at the outset, we must search for remedies before we can safely begin to think of ap- plying anodynes. The chief causes we shall find to be three in number: the first we shall notice is Emigration. I. In the last forty-five years, upwards of 5,000,000 persons have definitively left our shores to find new homes either in our various colonies or in the United States. Of this number we know that the vast majority were men, though the proportions of the sexes has, we believe, been nowhere published. A considerable amount of that excess of women, which we have recorded as pre- vailing, in the mother country, is thus at once accounted for, and is shown to be artificial and not natural, appar- ent rather than real. Nature makes no mistakes ; Na- * Population Return, 1851, Vol. II. p. clxv. 284 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. ture lias no redundancies ; and, as we shall presently see, the excess here li counterbalanced by a corresponding de- ficiency elsewhere. In the North American colonies the proportion is as follows : — Excess of Males. Canada (Census of 1851) Newfoundland (Census of 1857) NewBninswick(Censusof 1851) Nova Scotia (Census of 1861) Prince Edward Island (Census of 1861) Males. Females. Total. 949,034 64,268 99,526 165,584 40,880 893,231 58,370 94,274 165,273 39,977 1,842,265 122,638 193,800 300,857 80,857 1,319,292 1,251,125 2,570,417 55,803 5,898 5,252 311 903 68,167 In the Australian colonies the following is the propor- tion: — Population of Australia and New Zealand. Tear. Colony Males. Females. Total. Excess of Males. 1860 1861 New South Wales 213,021 328,651 59,678 9,843 16,817 48,602 45,341 147,406 211,671 58,289 5,750 11,239 39,173 34,284 360,427 540,322 117,967 15,593 28,056 87,775 79,625 65,615 116,980 1,389 4,093 5,578 1860 1861 1860 South Australia . Western Australia 1860 Tasmania . . . 9,429 11,057 1860 New Zealand . . Total . . .• 721,953 507,812 1,229,765 214,141 In 1840 (we still depend on the Eegistrar-General) the total excess of males over females in the United States was 309,000; the excess, after the age of twenty, was 198,000. This disproportion has assuredly been largely aggravated since, and we sliall be within the mark if we assume that at least 250,000 adult women are needed in America to redress the balance among the free white population of that country. The deficiency of female life WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 285 there is, as nearly as possible, the same as the redundancy in England, namely, Jive per cent. It will be observed that all we are able to give in these latter cases is the entire aggregate excess of males ; but since nearly tlie same proportion between the total fig- ures and the figures above twenty years of age may be assumed to prevail there as elsewhere, we shall be quite safe in the following table : — Deficiency of women over 20 years, — United States . . 250, 000 ,, ,, ,, Canadian Colonies 45,000 „ „ „ Australian Colonies . 145,000 440,000 Now the excess of women over twenty years of age in Great Britain in 1851 was 405,000. It appears, there- fore, on the aggregate, that more women are wanted in those new countries which took their rise hence than the mother country could supply them with. If the redun- dant numbers here were transported thither, they would scarcely be filled, and we should be denuded. Further, such an exodus, such a natural rectification of dispropor- tions, would reduce the unmarried adult women in Eng- land and Wales from 1,100,000 to 660,000, from more than a million to little over half a million. Nay, more, it would do this at once and diixctly ; it would do nmch more secondarily and indirectly ; such a vast reduction in the redundant numbers could not fail to augment the value of, and the demand for, the remainder. These figures, then, clearly indicate, and even loudly proclaim, the first remedy to be applied. We must re- dress the balance. We. must restore by an emigration of women that natural proportion between the sexes in the old country and in the new ones, which was disturbed by an emigration of men, and the disturbance of which has wrought so much mischief in both lands. There are, however, two serious difficulties in the way ; but difficul- ties are only obstacles to be overcome : — as soon as we see with sufficient clearness and feel with sufficient con- viction the course that ought to be pursued, we cannot 286 LITERACY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. doubt that some practicable mode will be devised in wliich it can be pursued. The first difticulty is chiefly mechanical. It is not easy to convey a nudtitude of women across the Atlantic, or to the antipodes, by any ordinary means of transit. To transport the half-million from where they are redundant to. where they are wanted, at an average rate of fifty pas- sengers in each ship, would require 10,000 vessels, or at least 10,000 voyages. Still, as 350,000 emigrants have left our shores in a single year before now, and as we do not need and do not wish to expatriate the wliole num- ber at once, or with any great rapidity, the undertaking, though difficult, would seem to be quite possible. But far the greater portion of the 350,000 emigrants were bound for the shorter voyage to America, and of the 440,000 women wdio should emigrate, the larger number are wanted for the longer voyage to Australia. Still it would be feasible enough to find passenger ships to take out 10,000, 20,000, or 40,000 every year, if they were men. But to contrive some plan of taking out such a number of women, especially on a three months' voyage, in comfort, in safety, and in honor, is a problem yet to be solved. We all may remember that the attempt was made by a Female Emigration Society, set on foot many years ago by the late excellent and benevolent Lord Her- bert ; but the results were such as effectually prevented a repetition of the experiment, — at least in the same man- ner and on the same scale. To send only a few women in each ship, and with adequate protectors, in no degree, met the requirements of the case ; and to send large num- bers, over whom no such guardianship could be exercised, and among whom were certain to be found some who would set the example and smooth the way to evil, led to such deplorable disorders as discredited the whole scheme, and caused its prompt abandonment. One ad- mirable and sagacious lady, however, was not to be thus discouraged. Discerning clearly what was wanted, and devoting her energies and personal superintendence to the task, Mrs. Caroline Chisholm established herself WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNBANT ] 287 in Sydney, made arrangements for receiving young fe- male emigrants as they landed into a comfortable and well-ordered home, and forwarded them into the interior under the charge of respectable families, from whose roof they were married as fast as they chose. Occasionally she took them up the country herself, under proper es- cort, and in considerable numbers, and located them wlierever she found that their services were required, and their position would be safe. Including families and single women, she is said to have comfortably settled eleven thousand souls. She afterwards came to England and organized "The Family Colonization Society," the object of which was to send out young women of good character and suitable capacities and health, under the charge of married couples, or in extemporized " family groups," — tlius aftbrding them the protection and con- trol often so sorely needed, both on the voyage and on their arrival in the land of their adoption. The scheme was admirable, and its success has been very great ; * the only drawback is, that the scale of the proceedings has been necessarily so limited that it is scarcely more than taking a drop out of an overflowing cistern to pour it on a thirsty desert. We want fifty Mrs. Chisholms, with government aid and government protection to whatever extent and in whatever form might be required, and this part of the problem would be solved. We are by no means blind to the practical impediments which must meet any extensive scheme of female emigration : all we wish to point out is, that if the mind of Australia and the mind of England were both adequately impressed with the necessity of solving the problem in the natural way, — if the 250,000 unmatched men in the colonies were determined to have wives, and a proportionate num- ber of unprotected women in the mother country were determined to have husbands, — means could and would be found of bringing the supply and the demand to- * Story of the Life of Mrs. Caroline Chisholm : with the Tailes of the Family Colouization Society. Trelawiiaj Saunders, Charing Cross, London. 288 LTTEIIAKY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. gctlier. The subject lias again Leen Ijrought before the l)ublic by two hulies who are pursuing a most useful ca- reer of judicious benevolence, for the service and to the credit of their sex, — Miss Emily Faithfull and Miss Maria Rye. They find plenty of women of all ranks willing and anxious to go out ; but as yet tlie funds are wanting and the organization is in its infancy. The second difiiculty is of adifierent cliaracter. There can be no doubt that three or four hundred thousand women who are condemned to celibacy, struggle, and privation here, might, if transfeiTed to the colonies or the United States, find in exchange a life, not indeed of ease, but of usefulness, happiness, domestic affection, reason- able comfort, and ultimate prosperity. But the class of women who are redundant here is not exactly the* class wanted in the colonies, or specially adapted for colonial life. The women most largely wanted there would be found among the working classes, and in the lower ranks fef the middle classes : the women who are mostly redun- dant, the " involuntary celibates " in England, are chiefly to be found in the upper and educated sections of society. Among the agricultural and manufacturing population, who earn their daily bread by daily labor, comparatively few women remain long or permanently single. It is ] those immediately and those far above them — who have i a i^osition to maintain and appearances to keep iip, who j are too proud to sink, too sensitive to contrive, too refined or too delicate to toil, or too sj^oiled to purchase love at the expense of luxury — that chiefly recruit tlie ranks of the old maids. The redundancy, in a \vord, is not in the emigrating class. This is true, no doubt ; but we have two remarks to make in reference thereto. The first is, that a removal of superfluous numbers, in whatever rank, / cannot fail gradually and indirectly to afford relief to the whole body corpoi-ate ; just as bleeding in the foot will i\ relieve the head or the lieartfrom distressing and perilous v. congestion. The second is, that we can see no reason, pride apart, why female emigration should not be pro- portionate from all ranks. Many gentlemen have gone WHY. ARE WOMEN EEDUNDANT 1 289 to New Zealand and Australia, and many more to Canada, preferring a life of honorable industry and eventual abundance in a new country to hollow and pretentious penury at home : why should not a relative number of ladies display similar good sense and sound appreciation of the realities of earthly felicity ? The class of women, again, who perhaps are more extensively redundant in England than any other, are those immcdiatchj above tlie laboring poor, those who swell the ranks of " distressed needlewomen," those who as milliners' apprentices so fre- quently fall victims to temptation or to toil, the daughters of unfortunate tradesmen, of poor clerks, or poorer curates. Now these, though neither as hardy nor as well trained for the severe labors of a colonial life as dairymaids, have all been disciplined in the appropriate school of poverty and exertion, and if their superior instruction and refinement added to their difhculties in one way, it would certainly smooth them in another ; for of all qualities which education surely and universally confers, tliat of adaptability is the most renlarkable. II. In female emigration, then, must be sought the rectification of that disturbance in the normal proportions between men and women which the excess of male emigration has created. But when this remedy has been applied as extensively as shall be found feasible, there will still remain a large " residual phenomenon " to be dealt with. We have seen that the extensive annual exodus from Great Britain, which has now grown almost into a national habit, has only raised the excess of adult women to about six per cent, whereas the proportion of adult women who are unmarried is thirty per cent. The second cause for this vast amount of supernormal celibacy is undoubtedly to be found in the growing and morbid LUXURY of the age. The number of women who remain unmarried, because marriage — such marriage, that is, as is within their reach, or may be offered them — would en- tail a sacrifice of that " position " which- they value more than the attractions of domestic life, is considerable in 13 S 290 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. the middle ranks, and is enormous in the higher ranks. This word " position " we use as one which includes iall the various forms and disguises which the motive in question puts on. Sometimes it is luxury proper wliich is thus inordinately valued, — dainty living, splendid dress- ing, large houses, carriages ad libitum, gay society, and exoneration from all useful exertion. Sometimes it is the more shadowy sentiment which values these tilings, not for themselves, — for to many they are wearisome even to nausea, — hut for their appearance. Hundreds of women would he really hapjiicr in a simpler and less lazy life, and know it well ; but to accept that life would he, or would be deemed to be, a derogation from their social status ; a virtual ejection, to a greater or less degree, from that society, that mode of existence, which they do not enjoy, but cannot make up their minds to surrender. Hundreds again — probably thousands — forego the joys of married life, not because they really cling to unrelished luxuries or empty show, but because they shrink from the loss of those actual comforts which refined taste or deli- cate organizations render almost indispensable, and which it is supposed (often most erroneously) that a small in- come could not sufficiently procure. They would will- ingly give up carriages, expensive dresses, and laborious pleasure, but they must have tolerably ample and ele- gantly furnished rooms, leisure for reading, occasional " outings," and intercourse with chosen friends. They don't wish to be idle, but they are not prepared to become drudges, — either mere nursemaids or mere housewives. To these must be added, as belonging in justice to the same category, those to whom men, who might otherwise love and choose them, abstain from offering marriage, under the impression tliat the sentiments we have described are the sentiments they entertain. Very often this impres- sion is wholy erroneous ; very often these women would thankfully surrender all those external advantages, to which they are supposed to be so wedded, for the sake of sharing a comparatively humble and unluxurious home with men whom they regard and esteem. But their own WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT] 291 language, their own conduct, or the habitual tone of the society to wliich they belong, has warranted and created tlie impression ; and therefore the fault as well as the penalty is theirs. Quite as many men — probably far more — share these sentiments, form tlie same estimates, and come to the same conclusions. They are loath to resign the easy in- dependence, the exceptional luxuries, the habitual in- dulgences of a bachelor's career, for the fetters of a wife, the burden and responsibility of children, and the decent monotony of the domestic hearth. They dread family ties more than they yearn for family joys. Possibly they do not care much about a carriage themselves, but they would not like their wife to be without it. They shrink from the additional exertion and the additional self-denial which marriage and its issues would demand ; and the visions of delicate children, and a sick or languid mother, to whom they could not give all the comforts and al- leviations and advantages they would desire, mingle with the reflection of the club they nmst cease to frequent, the gay society in which they would no longer be sought, and the social rank which, in fancy at least, they must step out of, to deter them from an irremediable proceeding. Now, with respect to those women who really and de- liberately prefer the unsatisfying pleasures of luxury and splendor to the possible sacrifices of married life, we have no compassion for them, and need not waste much thought iu endeavoring to avert the penalty of their unwholesome preference. Their hearts must be unusually cold, and their heads unusually astray. But numbers would make a wiser and a nobler choice, if they listened to the prompt- ings of their better nature, and if it were not for tiie double error, — that the luxuries and social occupations and appliances around tliem really confer much enjoy- ment, and might not be easily foregone, — and that a very great amount, perhaps all that is really indispensable, of refinement and of comfort cannot be secured with com- paratively scanty means. Much nonsense has been written, on both sides, about "love iu a cottage," and 292 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. " managing on £ 300 a year," and " keejiing up ai:)pear- nces," and the grave realities which those " apjiear- ances " often imply ; and we have no intention of broaching any extravagances as to any of these theses. We fully admit that a position which would trample upon rftal refinement can afford no liappiness to those in whose natures refinement is an ingrained element. We are only too well aware that defective health often renders that an absolute necessity to some which to hardier frames is a superfluity easily dispensed with. We quite agree that it is, for most persons, wise before entering on the married state to consider not only its obvious and prob- able, but many of its merely possible, contingencies, and to sit down carefully find count the cost, and their own means, both in purse and in character, of meeting it. We have not a word to say — at least, we are not going to say a word — against that facile, scented, and feather-bed existence, which a complicated and elaborate civilization renders so common and so tempting. Material enjoy- ment, where it is neither coarse nor vicious, is a very good thing, which no sensible layman will waste breath in denouncing or depreciating. But what we wish to represent, and what we would entreat our countrymen and countrywomen to consider is this : that a very large proportion of those luxuries, — whether the lusts of the flesh or the lusts of the eye, or the hollow gauds of pride, — which so foster the mistake of female celibacy in the educated classes, are neither necessary to the en- joyment of life, nor really contribute to it ; that those who have them are often juuch less happy than those \vho have them not ; they are factitious ; they are unre- munerative ; and in remaining single in order to retain them, both men and women are sacrificing a reality for that which is, and is constantly felt to be, as very a shadow and simulacrum as ever mocked the desert travel- ler thirsting for the substantial and refreshing waters of life. Let folks live for pleasure if they will ; let them l)lace their happiness in earthen vessels, and their joy in empty pageants, if so their vicious training or theii' shallow WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT] 293 natures shall delude them ; but at least let that, for which they forego what ive hold to be far better, be something which they really relish, and feel to be a treasure, not merely something which tliey fancy, and which others tell them, they onglit to value and delight in. People, moreover, are under a great delusion as to the incompatibility of a moderate income with most of the essential refinements, and even elegances, as well as comforts, of life. There is some truth in the idea, but the extent to which they push it is the reverse of true. The reason why substantial elegances and refinements are so often forfeited by those who marry upon small means is, that deceptive appearances are not surrendered. Many an income is amply sufficient to supply all that simple taste and a keen sense of comfort demand, — books and leisure for reading them, servants enougli to spare the mistress of the house from becoming eitlier a drudge, a slattern, or an invalid, and change of air and scene enough for health of mind and body, — which is quite inadequate to afford tliese things, and sliow and style as well, — a butler or a footman, costly and tedious dinner-parties, much visiting, or excursions in the height of the season to crowded and fashionable watering-places. No one who has seen the better side of French, or Swiss, or Italian family life, or who has been admitted to the intimacy of some of the well-regulated homes which are to be found among the more sensible, independent, and refined of our middle classes, will be at a loss to under- stand what we mean, or will hesitate to admit its accu- racy.* Hundreds of families do contrive to combine the * We have been at some pains (whenever an opportunity has presented itself) to analyze the reasons which make a very moderate income (say £ 400 or £ 500 a year) amply sufficient to maintain a./ami/y in eleejance, comfort, and cultivated refinement in other countries, and wholly in- adequate in England ; and when rigidly examined and piirsiOii home to ultimate facts, it is astonishing to discover how little is to be attribu- ted to difference of cost in the necessaries of life. The real cliflercnce lies, not in comfort, not in luxuries, not in social enjoyments, but in style of living, in things which either do not contribute to happiness, or ■which do so only because others have them and therefore we want them, or which, as far as really enjoyable or needed, could be had in a far 204 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. highest culture and the most essential comfort, as well as all the loveliest and happiest affections, with means which, to tliose wlio sul)mit to he the tame slaves and tlie ready echoes of the world's commands, would appear, and would be, scanty even for single life; and they effect this by the simple art of grasping at essentials instead of accidents, and substances instead of shows. We have not the faintest hesitation in affirming that one half of tliose of both sexes who now imagine themselves doomed to celibacy, on pain of squalor or derogation, might marry with perfect sufety if oidy their epicureanism (without being in any degree diminished) were rationalized enough to induce them to insist merely upon such appliances as in sober verity constituted or enhanced the felicity and the luxury of existence.* Connected with this part of the subject we must enu- merate one more fruitful source of female celibacy, — domestic service. The numljer of women servants in Great Britain, nearly all of whom are necessarily single, is as- tonishing. In 1851 it reached 905,165, and must now reach at least a million. Of these 905,165, 582,261 were cheaper form. . Some day we hope to be able to go to the bottom of this matter. * We may here notice, in passing, one not unfreqnent canse of female celibacy among the humbler classes, namely, education. Many girls in rather humble life are now so well educated, and in the course of that education, and as a consequence of the intercourse it sometimes involves with those above them, acquire so strong a taste for refinement of mind and courtesy of manners, that the comparative roughness and coarseness of the men in their own rank of life, among whom they would naturally look for husbands, become repulsive to them ; while at the same time their ow'n training and acquirements scarcely qualily them to match on fair terms with those above them. Their jjosition thus becomes an essentially false and perilous one ; their very superiority even is more of a danger than a safeguard ; they are attractive to, and attracted by, men whose notice is sure to bring them mischief ; from among them come many of the most elegant of the fillcs entretcniocs ; and to their accession is in a great degree to be attributed the marked im])rovement observable in the character and manners of this class of late years. We do not see how this incidental evil is to be averted; but its existence is indubitable, and should be noted. Anything which raises women above those whom alone, unless in very exceptional cases, they can expect to marry, may be a good thing, but in the present state of the English community it is a clearly purchased one. WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 295 twenty years of age and upwards. This is a social phe- nomenon in all civilized countries, though probably no- where on so great a scale as with us ; it would appear to be u permanent and a necessary one ; and probably in its essence and within due limits is not to be found fault with or deplored. That there are some evils connected with it is indisputable. No doubt many of these girls are exposed to considerable hardships. More probably are exposed to great temptations. Thousands of them live in a degree of comfort, and even luxury, which they would forfeit if they married in their own rank and de- scended to a cottage or a garret of their own, and the unwillingness to forfeit which makes them cling to single servitude as preferable to conjugal and maternal cares and joys. Thousands of them also acquire that percep- tion of, and taste for, refined manners and modes of life which are only to be found in the families of the upper ranks, which gradually become almost indispensable to them, and which we. have just alluded to in a note as constituting one of the dangers of the better educated daughters of the poor. Lastly, all of them, or nearly all, from years spent in a state of dependence and of plenty, in which everything is supplied to them and arranged for them without trouble or forethought of their own, lose or never acquire that managing faculty and those provident habits which would fit them to conduct a household of their own. If girls usually entered do- mestic service, as the Lowell factory girls in America enter the cotton-mills, only for a few years, to acquire prac- tice and to lay up a dowry, it might only have the effect of postponing their marriage to a prudent age ; but as it prevails among us, it is inimical to marriage altogether. The special remark, however, which we have to make upon this matter, as bearing on our present subject, is t\\nX, female servants do not constitute ami iiart (or at least only a very small part) of the, prohleyn ice are endeavoring to solve. They are in no sense redundant ; we have not to cudgel our brains to find a niche or an occupation for tJicm ; they are fully and usefully employed ; they dis- 29G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. charge a most important and indispensable function in social life; tlioy do not follow an obligatorily independent, and therefore for their sex an unnatural, career ; on the contrary, they are attached to others, and are connected with other existences which they embellish, facilitate, and serve. In a word, they fulfil both essentials of wo- man's being ; ilicy are siqyported hy, and iliey minister to, men. We could not possibly do without them. Kature has not provided one too many. If society were in a perfectly healthy state, we should no doubt have to man- age with fewer female serv^ants than at present ; they would earn higher wages ; they would meet with more uniform consideration ; and they would, as a rule, remain in service only for a few years, and not for life : but they must always be a numerous class, and scarcely any por- tion of their sex is more useful or more worthy. III. We have now to treat of the third and last chief cause of the abnormal extent of female celibacy in our country, — a cause respecting which speech is difficult, but respecting which silence would be undutiful and cowardly. We will be plain, because we wish both to be brief and to be true. So many ^^■omen are single because so many men are profligate. Probably, among all the sources of the social anomaly in question, this, if fully analyzed, would be found to be the most fertile, and to lie the deepest. The case lies in a nutshell. Few men — incalculably few — are truly celibate by nature or by choice. There are few who would not purchase love, or the indulgences which are its coarse equivalents, by the surrender or the curtailment of nearly all other luxuries and fancies, if they could obtain them on no cheaper terms. In a word, few — comparatively very few — would not marry as soon as they could maintain a wife in anything like decency or comfort, if only through marriage they could satisfy their cravings and gratify their passions. If their sole choice lay between entire chastity, — a celi- bacy as strict and absolute as that of women, — or obedi- ence to the natural dictates of the senses and the heart WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT] 297 in the only legitimate mode, the-decision of nine out of ten of those who now remain bachelors during the whole or a great portion of their lives would, there can be no doubt, be in favor of marriage. If, therefore, every man among the middle and higher ranks were compelled to lead a life of stainless abstinence till h& married, and unless he married, we may be perfectly sure that every woman in those ranks would have so many offers, such earnest and such rationally eligible ones, that no one would remain single except those to whom nature dictated celibacy as a vocation, or those whose cold hearts, independent tem- pers, or indulgent selfishness made them select it as a preferable and more luxurious career. Unhappily, as matters are managed now, thousands of men find it per- •fectly feasible to combine all the freedom, luxury, and self-indulgence of a bachelor's career with the pleasures of female society and the enjoyments they seek for there. As long as this is so, so long, we fear, a vast proportion of the best women in the educated classes — women es- pecially who have no dowry beyond their goodness and their beauty — will be doomed to remain involuntarily single. How this sore evil is to be remedied we cannot under- take to say. But what we have already said in an earlier part of this paper will suggest one or two palliatives and partial mitigations, which, together and in time, — by a cumulative and very gradual process, — may approach to something like a cure. When female emigration has done its work, and drained away the excess and the spe- cial obviousness of the redundance ; when women have thus become far fewer in proportion, men will have to bid higher for the possession of them, and will find it necessary to make them wives instead of mistresses. Again : when worthless appearances, and weary gayeties, and joyless luxuries, shall have lost something of their factitious fascination in women's eyes, in comparison with more solid and more enduring pleasures, they will be content with smaller worldly means in the men who ask their hands, and, as they become less costly articles 13* 298 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. of furniture, they will find more numerous and more eager purchasers. To speak broadly, as wives become less expensive and less cxigcantcs, more men will learn to prefer them to mistresses. Ladies themselves are far from guiltless in this matter ; and though this truth has been somewhat rudely told them lately, it h a truth, and it is one tliey would do well to lay to heart. Society — that is, the society of great cities and of cultivated life and liigh life — has for some years been gi-owing at once more expensive and less remunerative, more diflicult and more dull ; it exacts much and repays little ; its at- tractions are few, while its trouble and its gene are great. All this time, while the mondc has been deteriorating, the dcmi-mo7icle has been improving ; as the one has grown stupider and costlier, the other has grown more attractive, more decorous, and more easy. The ladies (here are now often as clever and amusing, usually more beautiful, and not unfrequently (in external demeanor at least) as mod- est, as their rivals in more recognized society. Want- ing the one essential female virtue, they often seek to atone for its absence by accomplisliments and amiabili- ties which irreproachable respectability does not invaria- bly display. Tliese. may be unpalatable facts : it is sad that things should be so, but they are so. Now, as long as men are fond of female society, and yet hate to be bored, and shrink from profitless exertion and fatiguing gene, and possess only a moderate competence, and above all tilings dread pecuniary embarrassment or ruin, — so long will those whose principles are not strict and whose moral taste is not fastidious be prone to seek that society where they can have it on the easiest and cheapest terms. And the only way in which virtuous women and women of tlie world can meet and counteract this disposition is the very opposite to that they have seemed inclined to adopt of late. They must imitate that rival circle in its attractive and not in its repellent features, — in its charms, not in its drawbacks nor its blots ; in its ease and simplicity, not in its boldness or its license of look and speech ; in the comparative economy of style which WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 299 covers so much of its wastefulness, and in the cheerful- ness and kindliness of demeanor which redeems or gilds so many of its sins. Single life, to those to whom it comes naturally, is, like all natural states, a happy and a dignified one.* Single life, to those on whom it is forced by individual errors or by vicious social prejudices or arrangements, is unnatural, and therefore essentially unsound, unstable, and the source of immeasurable wretchedness and mis- chief. Celibacy, within the limits which Xature has ]5re- scribed, and through her statistical interpreters has clearly proclaimed, is a wholesome and not unlovely fea- ture in the aspect of society. Celibacy, when it tran- scends these limits, and becomes anything but exceptional, is one of the surest and most menacing symptoms of something gravely and radically A\Tong. Therefore it is tliat all those efforts, on which chivalric or compassionate benevolence is now so intent, to render single life as easy, as attractive, and as lucrative to women as imliapjDily other influences to which M'e have alluded have already made it to men, arc efforts in a icrong direction, — spon- taneous and natural, no doubt, to the tender heart of hu- manity, which always seeks first to relieve sufiering, and only at a later date begins to think of curing disorder, — but not to be smiled upon or aided by wise prescribers * We are so anxions to preclude misconception of our views, that, at ths I'iok of repetition, we may say again distinctly that, where female celibacy is either necessary, natural, or voluntary, we would surround it with every honor and with every comfort and adornment. Maiden la lies are in hundreds of instances hoth more useful and more estimable and less selfish than the wives and mothers who are engrossed in conjugal and maternal interests. In thousands of instances they are, afkr a time, more happy. In our day, if a lady is possessed of a very moderate competence, and a well-stored and well-regulated mind, she may have inlinitely less care and infinitely more enjoyment than if she had drawn any of the numerous blanks which beset the lottery of maiTia:;e. Recent disclosures have added alarming confirmation to this con-.-lubion, and are producing considerable inlluence on the feelings of many women. All that we wish to lay down is, that God designed single life for only a few women, and that where he did not design it, it is a mistake, even though it be not a misery. 300 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. for the maladies of states. We despise the shallow igno- rance of the physician avIio administers an anodyne to allay pain arising from local inHanmiation or congestion, instead of resorting to the depletive measures which the cause of the pain unmistakably demands. But \ve have something more than contempt — we have abhorrence and disgust — for the menial complaisance of the (juack who is ever ready with his appetite pills and his emetics to remedy the indigestion of yesterday, and to render possible the gormandizing of to-day ; or who tasks his ingenuity and skill to save his dissolute patients from the penal and corrective consequences which nature had en- tailed on their excesses, and to enable them to continue those excesses with immoral and mischievous impunity. In like manner our philanthropy — that of many of us at least — is setting out on the wrong tack. To endeavor to make women independent of men ; to multiply and facilitate their employments ; to enable them to earn a separate and sample subsistence by competing with the hardier sex in those careers and occupations hitherto set apart for that sex alone ; to induct them generally into avocations, not only as interesting and beneficent, and therefore appropriate, but specially and definitely as lu- crative ; to surround single life for them with so smooth an entrance, and such a pleasant, ornamented, comforta- ble path, that marriage shall almost come to be regarded, not as their most honora])le function and especial calling, but merely as one of many ways open to them, compet- ing on equal terms with other ways for their cold and philosophic choice : — this would appear to be the aim and theory of many female.reformers, and of one man of real pre-eminence, — wase and far-sighted in most ques- tions, but here strangely and intrinsically at fault. Few more radical or more fatal errors, we are satisfied, phi- lanthropy has ever made, though her course everywhere lies marked and strewn with wrecks, and failures, and as- tounding theories, and incredible assumptions. Till the line we have pointed out has been definitely taken, and the remedies we have enumerated have at least hcyun to WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 301 be systematically and energetically applied, and the evil we have analyzed has been corrected at its source, and the social anomalies and distress arising therefrom have thus been brought within manageable compass, all such lenitives as are sufjgested will prove very questionable, to say no more. Then, however, when it has been fully recognized that they are lenitives, and not cures ; that they are needed, not to render possible the continuance of an unhealthy social state, but to clear away and re- lieve the miseries which that state — now sentenced and discarded — has left behind it; wlien it is seen and ad- mitted that what we have to do is to provide occupations, remunerative to themselves and to the society for which they live, not for a permanent and incurable excess of sin- gle women, but only for those whom our past errors have made single, and for those who are single either for a time only, or from exceptional disaster, or from nature and voca- tion, — our course w411 become very clear, and our work com- paratively very simple. On the details of this matter we have but a few remarks to make. More experience'd and more practical heads and hands than ours are busy at the task ; our only desire has been to see that the time inspiring and directing conception should be discerned and grasped. 1. And, firstly, those wild schemers — principally to be found on the other side of the Atlantic, where a young community revels in every species of extravagant fanta- sies — who would throw open the professions to w^omen, and teach them to become lawyers and physicians and professors, know little of life, and less of physiology. The brain and the frame of woman are formed with ad- mirable suitability to their appropriate work, for which subtlety and sensitiveness, not strength and tenacity of fibre, are required. The cerebral organization of the fe- male is far more delicate than that of man ; the continu- ity and severity of application needed to acquire real mastery in any profession, or over any science, are denied to w^omen, and can never with impunity be attempted by them ; mind and health would almost invariably lireak down under the task. And wherever any exceptional 302 LITERARY AND SOCIAL .lUDGMEXTS. M^omen are to be found who seem to be abnormally en- dowed in this respect, and whose power and mental muscle are almost masculine, it may almost invariably, and we l)elicve Ijy a law of physiolooical necessity, be observed that they have purchased this questionable pre- eminence by a forfeiture of some of the distinctive and most invaluable charms and capaljilities of their sex. 2. We are not at all disposed to echo the cry of those who object to women and girls engaging in this or that industrial career, on the ground that tliey thus reduce the wages and usurp the employment of the other sex. Against female compositors, tailors, telegraph-workers, and factory-hands this objection has lieen especially urged. We apprehend that it is founded on an obvious economical misconception. . It is an objection to the principle of comj)etition in the abstract. It is a bequest from the days — now happily passing away — of sur])lus population, inadequate emplo3^ment, and JNIaltliusian ter- rors. It is clearly a waste of strength, a supeifinous ex- travagance, an economic blunder, to employ a powerful and costly machine to do A\'ork which can be as well- done by a feebler and a cheaper one. Women and girls are less costly operatives than men : what they can do with equal efficiency, it is tlierefore wasteful and Ibolish {economically co7isiderccl) to set a man to do. By employ- ing the cheaper labor, the article is supjdied to the pub- lic at a smaller cost, and therefore the demand for the article is increased. If, indeed, there were only a certain fixed and unaugmentable quantity of work to be done, and too many hands to do it, — so that some mu.st un- avoidably be idle, — then it vtight be wise to employ men to do it, and let the women, rather than the men, sit with their hands before them. But it could be wise only in a moral, not in an economical, view of the sub- ject. Such a state of things, however, can never obtain in a healthy community, and rarely (if ever) in reality in any community at all. Certainly it is not the case with us. If women are employed as tailors or as printers, men are thereby set free for harder and more productive WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 303 labor, which they can do, and which women cannot. If women are selected to manage electric telegraphs, not only are men not wasted over that work (wherein half their strength and capacity would be unused and in con- sequence unprofitable), but telegrams become cheaper, and more telegrams are sent, and the puljlic is better served. The employment of women and children in fac- tories, at labor which they can do not only as well, but actually better than grown men (since it requires watch- fulness and nicety of touch rather than strength or skill), enabled our nmnufacturing industry to attain a develop- ment to which half the wealth and progress of the nation may be traced. If only men had been employed in cot- ton-mills, calicoes would have cost three times as much per yard as at present ; the population of England would have been smaller by some millions ; our ships and com- merce would have been proportionally restricted ; and distant countries would have been far more inadequately clotiied than they actually are. If there be any olyection to the employment of women and children in manufac- turing or other analogous sorts of labor, it must be based exclusively upon social or moral considerations ; and even then it will be found to be enormously over-esti- mated, to arise ironi a curable abuse or excess, and to be a separable accident, and not a mischief essential to the system. The employment of married women, in factory labor is undoubtedly an evil ; but it is so because the}'' continue it after they are mothers, when it does not pay, and because it disables them from making their hus- bands' homes comfortable, and from laying out their earnings with economy and skill. The employment of young girls in factory labor, too, is attended with the serious drawback, that it usually leaves them utterly ig- norant and inexperienced in household management ; but this is because they continue it too long, and give them- selves to it so exclusively. Abusus non tollit usum. 3. The condition of that section of unmarried women who earn, or attempt to earn, their bread as governesses has attracted, and assuredly deserves to attract, an un- 304 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. usual amount of public attention. Few conditions in our stage of civilization want amending and rectifying more. But here, as in so many otlier of our benevolent efibrts, we have been sailing on the wrong tack. Wliy has the function of a female educator, of a woman whose task it is, in the privacy and confidence of the domestic circle, not merely to instruct, Init often actually to form, the mind and the character of our girls, and up to a certain age of our boys too, — wliy has the position of those called to exercise this most responsible and mo- mentous of all functions been so little honored and so ill remunerated ? Mainly, we say it distinctly (where it has been little honored and ill remunerated), because it deserved no better ; because such numl)ers of those who undertook it were wretchedly qualified to discliarge it conscientiously or efficiently. It was ill paid and ill es- teemed, because it was ill clone. Governesses were a de- pressed and despised class — where they- were so — for the same reason that needlewomen were a distressed class ; because as every woman could read and ^^'rite and use a needle, as every woman could teach a little and sew a little, every uneducated woman who was destitute became a sempstress, and every educated (or half-educat- ed) woman became a governess. If none but the really competent had undertaken the profession, the profession would have been highly valued and highly rewarded. If there had been any recognized and reliable test by M'hich the competent could be distinguished from the incompetent, the former would have been honored and engaged, anjd the latter would have been neglected and starved out. But as the majority were utterly unfit for their task (whatever their excellent morals and inten- tions), and as there was no means of distinguishing the minority from the mass, all were discredited alike, and the average rate of reward fell to the a^'erage rate of merit, — perhaps even below it. The remedy seems to us clear. Let there be some institution authorized to examine ladies who desire to become teachers (if not also to prepare them for the work), and to confer upon them WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT 1 305 diplomas or certificates of qualification, as is the case in Germany, and we believe in other continental countries.* No one is allowed to practise medicine or surgery with- out proof of competence : why should any one be allowed to practise education ? No one unqualified may under- take the management of the body : why should the mind be left more recklessly unprotected? Surely as much mischief may be done by an incapable practitioner in the one case as in the other. But there would be no need to go as far as this. If all women who wished to become governesses could find a college in which to qualify themselves for the noble office ; and if all who were thus qualified could provide themselves with a cer- tificate of qualification, — the unprovided and incompe- tent would be unable to find employment, and would cease to lower the character and drag down the remuner- ation of the entire class into which they now intrude themselves unwarrantably. You would, at first, liave fewer following that calling ; but those who did follow it would hold their right position, and their numbers would be recruited as the need for them was felt. 4. There will still remain a large numlDer of single women unprovided for, of such a class in life tliat they cannot sink to be servants, of such a character and capa- city that they cannot rise to be governesses, who are yet under the necessity of finding some means of supporting themselves. They are very numerous now : they will probably always exist in moderate numbers, even when all the natural and healthy influences we have pointed out shall have wrought their remedial results. Some of these will be provided for by such occupations as those which Miss Maria Eye, Miss Emily Faith full at the " Vic- toria Press," and other judicious friends of the sex have endeavored to open to them. But as redundant single women are removed by emigration and by marriage, the population out of which the class of superior female ser- vants are recruited will be so much reduced, that that class will rise in value, in estimation, and in reward ; so • * Decided steps have of late begviu to be taken in this direction. T 306 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. • that the position will be sought by and eligible for many to whom it would now seem a decided derogation to enter it. 5. Lastly, there are occupations for which single women are and always will be wanted, — occupations which none other can discharge as well, or can discharge at all. There are the thousand ramilications of charity, — nurses, matrons, sceurs dc charite, " missing links " ; — functions of inestimable importance and of absolute neces- sity, -^ functions which if ill performed or unperformed, society would languish or fall into disorder. In a healthy state of civilization these tasks would absorb only a mod- erate number of women, perhaps not more than the four or five per cent whom Nature has provided ad hoc. In our disarranged and morbid state, the demand for their services is enormously enhanced, — enhanced, possibly, almost as much as the supply. Tlien there is a large and increasing call for a supjdy of literary food, such as many well-educated women find themselves fully able to fur- nish ; and if only those who are really competent to this work were to undertake it, it would keep them in ample independence. Novels are now almost as indispensable a portion of the food of English life as beef or beer ; and no producers are superior to \vomen in this line either as to delicate handling or abundant fertility. To sum np the whole matter. Nature makes no mis- takes and creates no redundancies. Nature, honestly and courageously interrogated, gives'no erroneous or ambigu- ous replies. In the case before us. Nature cries out against the malady, and plainly indicates the remedy. The first point to fix firmly in our minds is, that in the excess of single women in Great Britain we have a cura- ble evil to be mended, not an irreparable evil to be borne. The mischief is to be eradicated, not to be counterbal- anced, mitigated, or accepted, v To speak in round num- bers, we have one million and a half adult unmarried M'omen in Great l^ritain. Of these half a million are wanted in the colonies ; half a million more are usefully, WHY ARE WOMEN REDUNDANT? 307 happily, and indispensably occupied in domestic service : the evil, thus viewed, assumes manageable dimensions, and only a residual half-million remain to be practically dealt with. As an i mmediate result of the removal of five hundred thousand women from th^ mother country, where they are redundant, to the colonies, where tliey are sorely needed, all who remain at home will rise in value, will be more sought, will be better rewarded. The number who compete for the few functions and the limited work at the disposal of women being so much reduced, the competition will be less cruelly severe, and the pay less ruinously beaten down. As the redundancy at home diminishes, and the value is thereby increased, men will not be able to obtain women's companionship and women's care so cheaply on illicit terms. As soon as the ideas of both sexes in the middle and upper ranks, on the ques- tion of the income and the articles which refinement and elegance require, are rectified, — as soon, that is, as these exigencies are reduced from what is purely factitious to what is indisputably real, — thousands who now condemn themselves and those they love to single life will find that they can marry without foregoing any luxury or comfort which is essential to ladylike and cultivated and enjoyable existence. Finally, as soon as, owing to stricter principles, purer tastes, or improved social condition, — or such combination of all these as the previous move- ments spoken of must gradually tend to produce, — the vast majority of men find themselves compelled either to live without all that woman can bestow, or to purchase it in the recognized mode, — as soon, to speak plainly, as their sole choice lies between marriage and a life of real and not nominal celibacy, the apparent redundance of women complained of now will vanisli as by magic, if, indeed, it be not replaced by a deficiency. We are satis- fied that IF the gulf could be practically bridged over, so that women went where they are clamored for ; and if we were contented with the actualities instead of the empty and unreal and unrewarding shadows of luxury and refinement ; and if men were necessitated either to 308 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. marry or be chaste, — all of which things it is a discredit- able incapacity in us not to he able to accomplish, — so far from there being too many women for the work that must be done, and that only women can do well, there would be' too few. The work would be seeking for the women, instead of, as now, the women seeking for the work. We are disordered, we are suffering, we are astray, because we have gone wrong ; and our philanthropists are laboring, not to make us go backward and go right, but to make it easier and smoother to persist in wrong. TEUTH VERSUS EDIFICATIOK COX\^OCATIOX has recently* come to a decision of some importance, as far as importance can be said to attach to any decision of that anomalous and self-sur- viving body. The Lower House suggested and strongly urged the appointment of a committee "to report on" Dr. Colenso's book ; and the Upper House, in a crowded assembly of five members presided over by the Primate, in an evil hour, conceded the request. Three circumstances, however, gave a peculiar significance to this resolution. The Bishop of Oxford was opportunely absent, being op- portunely ill. The resolution was adopted by a majority of one, — three Bishops voting in its favor, and two against it. And the three " ayes " were the Bishops of Lincoln, St. Asaph, and Llandaff, while the two " noes " were the Bishops of London and St. David's. These two eminent dissentients pointed out certain objections to the course proposed, and certain difficulties in which its adoption might involve them. They intimated that good seldom arose out of authoritative condemnations of argumentative works ; that such condemnations and prose- cutions were generally urged by inconsiderate and un- knowing juniors, or by gray-headed men as inconsiderate and unknowing as the young ; and that to denounce a book which they did not propose to answer, and a man whom they might officially be called upon to judge, was scarcely wise, and certainly not decorous. This ground, indeed, had been boldly and plainly taken by a member of the Lower House on a ])revious day. He pointed out the very obvious consideration that the only * 1863. 310 LITERARY»AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. effectual means of counteractinfr the miscliief said to he ■wrought or menaced by the book whose puljlication they all deplored, was to reply to it; to show where it was wrong, and to ])rove that it was wrong. And it is the more clear that tliis course is obligatory upon some one, because while it may he assumed, and is confidently be- lieved by tliose who have been most startled and shocked, that many of the jjropositions in the inculpated volume are untenable and niay easily be refuted, it is equally certain that some of them are true and cannot be gain- said ; and the religious world are anxiously desirous to be told by some competent and accredited instructor which of the Bishop of Natal's statements are correct, and which are erroneous. It is obvious that a co7idcmna- tion of the book, however severe, however unanimous, however high the authority from which it may proceed, will afford no satisfaction on this — the essential — point to sincere and pious inquirers. We fully understand the reluctance of those prudent and learned members of the Episcopate wlio voted against the appointment of the committee in question, to under- take, or to allow any of their authorized brethren to undertake, the task of dealing with Dr. Colenso's work. They know well — though the great body of the clergy who constitute the Lower House may probably be igno- rant — that any honest, effectual, and competent reply must commence by concessions which would startle the generality of English churches almost as much as the obnoxious book itself, and might unsettle their faith far more ; because, though they would be less extensive, and would refer to points less vital, they would be as new to the masses, would come from a higher authority, and, once made, could not be recalled. This is the real difficulty that stands in the way of any attempt to meet Dr. Colenso's biblical criticism on the part of our ecclesiastical dignitaries and " accredited teachers." It may well be that all that is truly noxious and dangerous in the Bishop's book could be satisfactorily and conclusively refuted by an unfettered layman whom piety and learning should TRUTH VERSUS EDIFICATION. 311 combine to qualify ; but the very position in which he would place his battery would raise suspicions and accu- sations of treachery from the churches whose battle he was going to fight, and the first shot he fired would strike even greater dismay into the hearts of his own camp than into the ranks of the enemy. We can understand also the disinclination of fair and qualified divines, like Dr. Tait and Dr. Thirl wall, to anath- ematize a work which, mischievous and erroneous as they might deem it as a whole, yet contains some correc- tions of old errors and misconceptions such as they would themselves be glad to see generally accepted, and some wholesome views, usually denied or neglected, which they themselves have long entertained. AVe approve, there- fore, both their prudence and their loyalty ; and we regret that it should have been reserved for a layman, who has drunk too deep at the fountains of all literature and of some sciences not to know where truth lies, so to imitate one of the most ordinary and most indefensible proceed- ings of the ecclesiastical mind, as to denounce a book wdiich he not only does not attempt to refute, but which he does not even profess to believe is, in its main prop- ositions and substantial essence, capable of refutation. A recent number of Macmillans Magazine contains an article * from the pen of Mr. Arnold, strongly condemn- ing, not the conclusions of Bishop Colenso's book, but the publication of that book. The article in question, like everything that proceeds from the same source, is emi- nently characteristic, able, polished, and interesting ; but it maintains a thesis so questionable, and is based upon fallacies so transparent and assumptions so inaccurate, that we are filled with surprise at so practised a disputant venturing to take up a position so unsafe. The opinion of Mr. Arnold — which lie appears to hold as firmly as any Catholic divine, and which he certainly l)roaches as nakedly as any Pagan philosopher — is, that the distinction between esotei'ic and exoteric views and knowl- edge is as obligatory as that between the divine and the * Tlw Bishop and the Pldlosopher. By Matthew Arxold. 312 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. human, the sacred and the profane, and cannot be disre- garded or broken down without mischief or without guilt ; that truth is the privilege of the few, and edification the only claim and right of the many ; that, in a word, sound doctrine is for the clergy, and safe doctrine for the laity. "We are naturally a little startled at the naive courage with which this very academic notion of the Ox- ford professor is propounded by one of her Majest}''s in- spectors of schools assisted and superintended by the state ; but as we are desirous to avoid all abstract or dis- putable questions, and as there is a sense in which, and a limit up to which, the thesis m question does admit of justification, we shall not join issue with Mr. Arnold upon this ground. We may at once concede, as a general principle, that in all cases, mental as well as material, the soil must be prepared before the seed is sown, if we wish to reap a satisfactory and wholesome harvest ; that "strong meat is not lor babes " ; and that the young, the ignorant, and the uncultured masses, who seek only moral guidance and spiritual consolation and support, should be fed with what St. Peter terms " the sincere milk of the "Word," rather than with " doubtful disputations." But when Mr. Arnold proceeds to apply his esoteric philosophy to the case before us,* and to deduce special rules from his general theory, he comes upon propositions which are not only utterl}^ inadmissible as practical directions, but quite incorrect as serious statements. No book (on such a subject as biblical criticism or theology) ought to be Avritten, says Mr. Arnold, unless it is calculated either " to inform the instructed, or to edify the uninstructed " ; uidess it aims either to elevate the moral condition of the masses, or to add to, and carry forward to a higher point than it has yet reached, our knowledge of theological science. Bishop Colenso's book does neither. It has therefore no raison cVeirc, and its publication is a culpable indiscretion. " We knew all this before," says, in efi'ect, the Oxford Professor : " it is no news- to us that mucli of the Pentateuch is unhistorical, its figures usually untrustworthy, and its facts often ques- TRUTH VERSUS EDIFICATION. 313 tionable, and sometimes obviously incorrect : you have told us nothing fresh, and even the old matter you liave not told us particularly well ; and, more than this, you had no business to tell it to the multitude at all. If you must write such a book, you ought to have written it in Latin ; in which case it could have been read by few of thQ working clergy, and by scarcely any of the busy laity." Now, if Mr. Arnold is contertt to use the terms of his general proposition in a sti^ict sense, we should not be in- clined to dispute it. Ev^ery religious work — indeed, every serious work — ought to be able to plead as the justification, botli for its existence and its character, that it seeks either the enlightenment of the instructed few or the edification of the ignorant many. But he does not use his terms, or at least he does not apply them, strictly ; and therefore we demur to the doctrine, and we hold his application of it to be slippery and unfair. "We affirm that Bishop Ccjlenso's book is calculated both to inform those whom Mr. Arnold, Ave presume, would in courtesy consider as the instructed, and to edify those whom he would include among the uninstructed ; and we are satis- fied that the Professor, as soon as he looks at our asser- tion closely and in the concrete, will be the first to agree with us. We should think very ill of our argument if we could not carry with us in every step of it a mind so lucid, so straightforward, and so sincerely liberal as Mr, Arnold's. There are not less than fifteen thousand clergymen of the Church of England, and about as many more divines, or ministers, of other sects, — Baptists, Presbyterians, Wes- leyans, Pomanists, Unitarians, etc., — who are every Sun- day employed in expounding the Scriptures and preaching Christianity to various congregations in Great Britain. There are, that is, thirty thousand accredited theological teachers, whose business it is to " edily the ignorant masses," and who labor diligently and honestly in their vocation. Now, we simply ask, do these preachers, as a rule, belong to ]\Ir. Arnold's class of " instructed," or to his u 314 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. other class of the " uninstriicted " ? If to the instructed, then it is manifest tliat the Bishop's book is eminently calculated to " inform them," and to carry' forward their knowledge of biblical criticism and theological science. !Mr. Arnold knows, far Ijetter than we can tell him, how deplorably slight is the j^'^'^l/cssional education of the Church clergy ; and ho\v still more superficial is that of the great majority of dissenting ministers. It is certainly not too much to say that out of the above-named thirty thousand religious teachers, whom by courtesy we must rank among the " instructed," there are not above five thou- sand to whom the Bishop's facts and arguments will not be almost or altogether new. The remaining twenty-five thousand, if they do not now learn for the first time that tlie doctrine of the Plenary Inspiration has been im- ])ugned, have no idea that it has long since been aban- doned by all the thoughtful and really learned even among orthodox and earnest Christians ; that no one, however pious, who has studied theology as a science, or is at all acquainted with the result of tlie investigations of the ablest divines, now believes that the Pentateuch, as we have it, was written by Moses, or doubts that its narratives are often legendary, and its numbers almost invariably mythical. To all these men the facts and reasonings of the Bisliop will come like a fiash of daz- zling and bewildering lightning. It will not only " carry forward their knowledge of biblical criticism," it will be nearly their first introduction to that new department in their own field of thought. It will not only " inform them further" on topics which ought to have been famil- iar to them from their ordination, it will be literally the alpliabet of that information to most of them. These things, which are old and almost trite verities to " us," are to them the most astounding and disturbing novelties. Dr. Colenso's book to all these men will be what Lessing and Eichhorn, and De Wette and Ewald, and Strauss were successively to the theological world of Europe. It does not, indeed, greatly carry forward the science of biblical criticism, but it brings that science for the first time TRUTH V£ESUS EDIFICATION. 315 home to the vast majority of British ministers of the Gospel. If, then, the mass of English clergymen, orthodox and schismatic, be included by Mr. Arnold in his category of the instructed few, then there can be no doubt that the Bishop's book will " inform and enlighten " them, and has therefore made good its title to existence. If, on the other hand, Mr. Arnold, from the height of his academic culture, and looking to indisputable facts, should relegate them in his calm and dignilied serenity to the crowded ranks of those uninstructed many, for Mdiom " edification " is all that is necessar}^ and all that is accessible, — then in reference to that proposition also we have a word or two to say. But the argument we are criticizing was ob- viously based upon the first and more polite division ; and on that supposition only could it have any validity whatever. If, indeed, as J\Ir. Arnold appears tacitly to have assumed or intended to imply, the theological teach- ers of the nation — all " instructed " men — knew per- fectly well, and had long known, that nmch of the Pen- tateuch was unhistqrical, that none of it was verljally and textually inspired, that it contained many narratives which were legendary, and some legends that were of a very doubtful moral tendency, — that amid splendid truths and sublime revelations, and pure and noble pre- cepts, and marvellous insight into God's character and dealings, it mingled much of a \'ery different if not op- posing nature ; — and if, knowing all this, they carefully winnowed the wheat from the chaff, and — without dis- turbing the minds of their uncritical and undoubting hearers by hints of sceptical theology — taught them only what was edifying, made them believe only what was credible, insisted only on worthy and elevated views of God, and reiterated and enforced only that pure mo- rality and that unfaltering trust as to the truth and value of Avhich no question could arise, — then, indeed, we might have been ready to admit that critical propositions which all the wise knew need not be repeated, and that the ignorant who knew them not would be no better 31G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. nor happier for liavinp; theru proclaimed and expounded. But Mr. Arnold is well aware that the "if" supposed is the very reverse of the truth ; that the majority of the- teachers wlio every Sunday get up into their pulpits to " edify " the multitude below them, neither endeavor to keep the difficulties of the Old Testament in the hack- ground, nor are conscious of the existence of those diffi- culties ; hut, on the contrary, often appear with a kind of ])erverse instinct to delight in Lringing them forward, and dwelling upon them till tlie thoughtful are unsjieakahly disgusted, and the thoughtless are hopelessly perplexed and led astray. Mr. Arnold's assumption, therefore, of an instructed clergy who know already all the Bishop can tell them, falls to the ground as notoriously at variance with facts. The plain truth is, that the assumption of an instructed clergy and an uninstructed laity is a purely imaginary one ; and in the fact that this line of demarcation is im- aginary lies the substantial justification of all Avorks like l3r. Colenso's. It is, indeed, only through the laity that we can instruct the clergy. It is only by appealing to the jj'ojm his that the citrus c£[n he made to open their eyes or to guard their lips. In this country there is a great analogy between the only eflectual course of proceeding available to reformers in theological and in political mat- ters. Every one who has tried has been compelled to ad- mit, with bitterness and indignation, that if he desires to bring the government to abandon a mistaken system or to adopt sounder views, it is not to members of the government that he must address himself. Time so em- ployed is usually thrown away. He must convince the public, not the ministers ; and when the public is en- lightened and persuaded and grows noisy, then the offi- cials follow tardily, reluctantly, and grumblingly in its M'ake. Ecclesiastical tenacity in adhering to old ideas, es- tablished ibrmulas, obsolete errors, and exploded routine, is at least a nuitch for Inireaucratic immovability and (to coin a word) unconvinceability. As long as listeners aie uninstructed, preachers will continue to enunciate, with TRUTH VERSUS EDIFICATION. 317 the same security as heretofore, the drawling platitudes, the innutritious ethics, the unbelievable legends, the startling narratives, the uneditying commentaries, the re- pellent dogmas, with which it is their inveterate custom to regale their audience, — and will call these thinc;s tb.e saving trutli of God. Does any one suppose — does j\Ir. Arnold fancy — that if the mass of the people, the ra- tional but unlearned laity, were once conversant with the untenable nature of the doctrine of Plenary Inspiration and the unhistoric character of many of the Old Testa- ment narratives, the pulpits of the land would dare to resound Sunday after Sunday, from our cradle to our grave, with the dreary, shallow, unprofitable, misleading verbiage which our clergy now deem good enough for hearers who know no better ? Does any one believe that, till the people are thus enlightened, there is any prospect of this discreditable and injurious state of tilings being amended ? You must force the "accredited teach- ers of reliiiion"to teach truth and sense and edifying doctrine, by so augmenting the capacities and require- ments of their flocks that they cannot, for fear of being put to open shame, do otherwise. Looking at all these considerations, — comparing with much sadness, and with no little anger, what the few really instructed clergy believe and know, with what the majority of the clergy habitually preach, — we are driven to affirm that there is a sense, and a most essential sense, in which works like Bishop Colenso's are edifying to the general public, — the mass of reading and thinking, though unlearned men. We are not going to eulogize the particular volume in question. Eegarded as a philo- sophic treatise, and viewed in the light of the higher exegesis, it might seem weak and narrow if we did not receive it as part of an unfinished Avhole. Nearly all the efficiency — of the first part at least — would be neutral- ized by a controversialist who should at once concede th&.t the Jigures of the Old Testament — whether from original obscurity of notation or from errors of co])yists arising out of that obscurity — are obviously unreliable. 318 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. But let ns remember tliat this book is in the main spe- cifically directed against the position of those divines who maintain the verbal ins]iiration, the entire accuracy, the iniassailable textual authority of every part and of every statement in the Bible. Tliis position is most crucially tested and most effectually and irrecoverably overthrown ])y precisely such minute and narrow arguments as Dr. Colenso has adduced. His small weapons penetrate where heavier falchions wonld merely make a dint. The multi- ])lication-table has a grasp which wull hold thousands of minds that w^ould slip easily away from any philosophic syllogism or dilemma, and on whose pachydermatous nature the sharpest shai'ts of rhetoric would be blunted or turned aside. Against detailed and positive dogmatism, detailed and microscopic criticism is the best antagonist that can be employed. And no one can deny that, while it leaves (thus far) all the religions value of the Bible untouched, as an assault npon the dogma in question — verbal and j^lenary inspiration — the Bishop's book is irresistible and its success complete. And this at once brings us to the proposition to which we have been leading up, and Mhich waiTants us in characterizing the "Inquiry into the Pentateuch" as emi- nently edifying. Many of those doctrines of Christianity, as ordinarily preached, which most perplex and try the faith of sincere believers, and most effectually repel from the threshold of belief thoughtful, pure, and earnest minds of all classes, depend for their authority mainly or solely on special texts and passages, which are often at variance with the general tone and tenor of the book. These special texts and passages are considered conclusive, and all men have been required to fall prostrate before them, and submissively accept their teaching, merely on the strength of that dogma of verbal inspiration which Dr. Colenso so effectually overthrows. It cannot be too strongly stated that nearly all the difficulties which have stood in the way of the cordial reception of the pure re- ligion of Christ, whether by foreign heathens or by native sceptics, have been gratuitous, artificial, and the creation TRUTH VERSUS EDIFICATION. 319 of Christian ministers and divines. Thousands npon thousands would have accepted the rich essentials of the New Testament readily and joyously, who could not ac- cept the legends, the dogmas, or the speculative proposi- tions which were affirmed to form ]jart and parcel of Christianity, to be inextricably bound up in its nature, and to be inferentially involved in its reception. It is' not the noble poetry, and the sublime devotion, and the unfailing trust of Job, and David, and Isaiah ; it is not the fascinating character, the solemn grandeur, the elevat- ing, enriching, guiding, glorious career of the Saviour while on eartli ; it is not the satisfying, comforting, strenutheniufj, convincing views of our relations to God our Father which he first taught and made us compre- hend ; it is not those grand and far-reaching hopes, nor those grave, sad warnings, nor those ineffable and inspir- ing consolations which we may gather from every page of the N"ew Testament and from many pages of the Old, — it is none of these things that have deterred the thought- ful and the good, or even the careless and the critical, from accepting Christianity on their knees with gratitude and with submission as the greatest boon ever offered to struggling and aspiring man. All these things would have been attractive, not repellent ; and these things are the essence of the faith which Jesus taught and for which he lived and died. But the angel that has stood with flaming sword at the gate, and has driven men away from the threshold of that Eden of Truth and Hope, in which they might have found rest for their troubled souls, strength for their feeble knees, and a lamp for their dark and thorny path, has been this very doctrine of verbal inspiration and textual correctness, against which Dr. Colenso has broken so keen a lance. We need not go into long details ; a few specified in- stances will do the work as effectually as a hundred. We need only remind our readers that it is on the aunwrity of this dogma, and on this alone, that educated and rational men are required, as the very condition, as it were, of their admission into the Temple, to accept as true the six 320 LITEr.ARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. days of Creation with all tlieir rude errors and tlieir singular misconceptions ; the Tree of Knowledge, the Apple and the Fall ; tvo statements as to Noah's ark and the aniinals that entered it, utterly contradictory, and Loth incredible ; the ingenious legend of the Tower of Babel ; the literal version of the Plagues of Egypt, and •the crowded miracles of the Exodus, the Passage of the Iicd Sea, the Sojourn in the Desert, and the establish- ment in Canaan ; the strange and more than strange stories about the Patriarchs ; and, to crown the whole, the directly divine origin of the horrible Levitical instruc- tions. No one, of course, would dream of accepting these as history, if not constrained to it by the dogma of verbal inspiration ; nor, were it not for this dogma, would any one feel them a serious obstacle to the reception of all that the Old Testament contains of noble, and elevating, and true, in its teachings of " the ways of God to man." So much for narratives. In the matter of creed and doctrine, there are two or three Articles of Faith which have more than any other stood in the way of the cordial and grateful reception of Ecclesiastical Christianity by the most pure and honest minds, — those whose instincts of justice Mere truest and strongest, — those whose con- ceptions of the Deity were the most lofty and consistent. These are the doctrines of Vicarious Punishment, of Salvation by Belief, and of Eternal Damnation. Of these doctrines — as now promulgated and maintained — three things may in our judgment be confidently asserted : that they were undreamed of by Christ ; that they can never be otherwise than revolting and inadmissible to all whose intuitive moral sense has not been warped by a regular course of ecclesiastical sophistry; and that no Christian or sensible divine would think of preaching them were they not inculcated, or supposed to be incul- cated, by isolated te.xts of Scripture ; and were it not held that every text of Scripture is authentic, authorita- tive, indisputably true, and, in some sense or other, in- spired and divine. "We are driven, therefore, to the conclusion that this proposition, or theory, or dogma, — TEUTH VERSUS EDIFICATION. 321 whichever we may please to call it, — is mischievous and hostile to the pure religion of Jesus in two ways : it de- ters thoughtful and sincere minds from receiving it, and it corrupts and complicates and stains it to those who have received it, by mingling with it incongruous and deteriorating accretions. To destroy this dogma, there- fore, to demonstrate its untenability, to shake its hold on both the teachers and the taught, is, we maintain, to " edify " in a peculiar and a double sense, and is the most signal and the most needed service which a good and pious man can render to the sacred cause of Christianity and Truth. Apparently ^Mr. Arnold has been somewhat startled by the reception of his first paper, and the impression it has produced upon the minds of the classes whom he thought he was addressing ; for he has mingled with a cordial and well-merited eulogium of " Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church," which has just appeared in the same periodical, an elaborate explanation and justification of his former judgment. This attempted justification is, in our eyes, a singular aggravation of the offence, and con- tains more injustice and unfairness than we can easily comprehend in a writer so peculiarly luciil and a thinker ordinarily so exact. The tone, the assertions, and the arguments resemble far more those of a baffled, botliered, and irritated clergyman, angry with a controversialist who had dazzled and bewildered him, than the calm treatment of a philosopher who is serene because he knows that he is clear and feels that he is strong. Mr. Arnold affirms that Mr. Burgon's proposition, that " Every word, every syllable, every letter of the Bible is the direct utterance of tlie Most High," is a tliousmul times less false than Dr. Colen.so's statement, that " the writer of Exodus, while compiling his legend, was innocent of all conscious wrong or deception." So at least we read his singular assertion. He commends Spinoza for saying that " the Bible con- tains much that is mere history, and, like all history, sometimes true and sometimes false," — because Spinoza uttered this merely as a speculative idea, and " brought it 14* o 322 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. into no juxtaposition " with the reh'gions faith of Christen- dom. He justifies Galileo in declaring, in spite of Joshua, that it was the earth and not the sun that moved ; hut says that if Galileo had " placed this thesis in juxtaposi- tion with the Book of Joshua, so as to make that hook regarded as a tissue of fictions, then his ' the earth moves,' in spite of its absolute truth, would liave become a false- hood." Again, in order to condemn Dr. Colenso hy the contrast, he praises Dr. Stanley for telling the reader that with regard both to the numbers, and the chronology, and the topographical details of the Israelitish Journey, " we are still in the condition of discoverers," and that " suspense as to such matters is the most fitting approach for the consideration of the presence of Him who has made darkness his secret place." How could he lose sight of the fact that this " exactness " as to all details which Dr. Stanley condemns, is the most marked character- istic of the Biblical writers, and that precise feature of their narratives which Dr. Colenso assails and exposes. Plainly enough, neither Mr. Arnold nor Dr. Stanley be- lieves the details given by the sacred writers to be always " exact " : why should Dr. Colenso be singled out for blame because he undertakes to show how "inexact" they are ? Mr. Arnold takes up one very singular position. The " intellectual ideas " around which the religious life of any age collects, and to which it clings, are often, he says, inaccurate, and even unfounded ; and from time to time are discovered and proved to be so. New views and new truths are established in reference to religious matters, and " to make these new truths harmonize with the religious life " — i. e. with the religious feelings of mankind — is, he admits, a task which must sooner or later be performed, though " one of the hardest tasks in the world." But then he says it should be left to the Zeit-Geist, or Spirit of the Time ; or if ventured upon by any man, it should be by one of those great prophets who only appear on the stage once in many ages. Only an Isaiah or a Luther ought to venture on translating for TRUTH VERSUS EDIFICATION. 323 tlie world the new intellectual trutlis and religious dis- coveiies of a Spinoza or a Hegel. " Lisensihhj" he says, these new ideas should percolate downwards and around, till the nation has become more or less penetrated with them, and " the time comes for the State, the collective nation, to intervene," and adopt and adapt them. But wliat does he mean by "insensibly " ? And how is this percolation and inoculation to be effected without human agency ? " Time," Mr. Arnold thinks, will do it. But what is Time save an abstraction, unless it means the sum of influence exerted on the general mind by some scores of writers like Dr. Colenso ? How could " Time " operate if all Colcnsos are to be condemned to everlasting silence ? To live forever in the intellectual ideas of those who framed the Articles and the Prayer Book is, Mr. Arnold avows, impossible. The old popular notion of the Atonement "is barbarous and false." The new ideas, being the true ones, must somehow or another, he feels, — " insensibly " if possible, — be introduced into, and made to harmonize with, the religious life of the people. But it must not be done by proclaiming them, by arguing for them, by demonstrating them, before the assembled intelligence of the nation. It must be done by some undescribed mental effluvia, some subtle intel- lectual emanation, homoeopathic, and therefore at once harmless and penetrating. It must needs be (says the Professor, with a sigh of mingled candor and resignation) that enlightenment come ; but woe to that man through whom it comes ! And the woe is not prophesied for him as an imprudent man, but denounced against him as a dangerous and noxious one. Mr. Arnold, in the strength of his trained intelligence and from the height of his accumulated learning, has been enabled to sever in his own mind the questionable, inadmissible, and unworthy portions of the Scriptures from their cherished essence, their grand truths, their sublime conceptions, and their guiding light, — to assimi- late the one and discard and pass by the other. He can say, " I will live by the teaching and the inspiration of 324 LITERARY AND SOCIAL. JUDGMENTS, Isaiah and Job, and David in his finer moods, and Clirist and Paul ; and I will not plague myself with the cruel- ties, and sacerdotal trivialities, and shocking orders, and astounding narratives of Leviticus and Numbers. Tliey pass over me like the idle wind which 1 regard not." But v:ho and what enables him thus to analyze the ore, to clasp the gold and to reject the dross ? Does he not reilect that, till men like Colenso have cleared the way and done the work, and achieved for him the eclectic freedom in which he revels, all that he discards or ignores in the Bible may be forced down his throat as equally authori- tative, equally essential, equally divine, with all that he accepts ? Does he not remember that, as long as that doctrine of Plenary Inspiration, at which Colenso has struck such a staggering and mortal blow, remains erect, all his wise and just discrimination is, in the eyes of or- dinary Christians, ordinary clergymen, ordinary churches, mere daring heresy and sin ? Can he not pei-ceive that Colenso is laboring to win, Icgcdly, jyuhluiy, and for all, that acknowledged right of separating God's truth from man's assertion, which Mr. Arnold, 2^cr salfum, by law- less assumption, in his secret soul, and in his locked closet, has done for himself alone ? An ordinary believer — pious, sincere, knowing not Colenso, and having not been " insensibly " inoculated by the subtle emanations of the Zeit-Gcist, but trained in the common doctrine of Biblical Inspiration — is often put to sore suffering and trial. A man in sacerdotal robes, brought up at the feet of the most accredited Gamaliel, stamped as sterling by the image and super- scription of the National Church, addresses him thus : "You are bound to believe — for it is all written in the Inspired Books and indorsed by the Church — not only that God created man ; called Abraham ; led the Israel- ites out of Egyptian bondage, and set them apart and trained them as a peculiar people ; revealed his true character and relations through a succession of prophets ; and finally completed the purification and redemption of man through Jesus Christ ; — but also that he directed TRUTH VERSUS EDIFIQATION. 325 the construction of Noah's Ark, and sent all living beasts therein ; aided Jacob in a filthy fraud ; sanctioned the basest treachery ; commanded fearful cruelties and un- merited penalties ; permitted the flogging of slaves to death, provided only they did not die upon the spot ; showed his back but not his face to Moses ; and dictated the veracious narrative of Balaam and his ass. You must accept the one set of statements as not only equally true, but equally valuable and instructive, with the other ; for what are you, that you should dare to choose between one and another deed or word of the Most High, or place one on a higher level than another ? You must receive all these things, on peril of damnation ; for they are all written in the Word of God ; everything written tlierein is inspired : and to reject or doubt ' the true sayings of God ' is damnation." An ordinary Christian, thus ad- dressed, either succumbs or resists. If he succumbs, his reason is outraged and bewildered, and his moral sense is shocked and injured. If he resists, he is made miserable by douhts, misgivings, and tormenting fears. The same man, in sacerdotal garments, comes to Mr. Arnold and addresses him in the same words. But the Professor, serene and unassailable in his double armor of natural intelligence and perfect culture, waves him aside with a gesture of supreme, ineffable disdain, saying, " Pooh, pooh, man ! don't talk that stuff to me." Now, the work that Dr. Colenso has bound himself to do — and which, if he completes his labors with success, he will have done — is to enable the poor man as well as the savant and the sage, the layman as well as the professor, John Smith as well as Matthew Arnold, to say to impertinent teachers from the uninstructed Church, " Pooh, pooh ! I know how to distinguish the building from the rubbish. I know wherein religious truth con- sists and where religious life lies. Don't choke me with your regulation loaf of fossil sawdust, and tell me that is the Bread of Life." The Bible contains, in different passages, two discre- pant ideas of the nature and attributes of the Supreme 32G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. Boinp:, aliout as wide asunder as ever prevailed amonj,' organized and civilized nations. It is only by the estab- lisliment of the doctrine which it is the object and the justification of the Bishop of Natal's book to demonstrate, — namely, that though the Bilde contains the Word of God, it is not the Word of God, but contains much beside this, and much that is irreconcilable with this, — that we can acquire an indefeasible right of choosing between these two discrepant conceptions. If the Bible be the "Word of God, and be in every portion of it true and in- spired, then one of these two conceptions is just as correct and authoritative as the other, and we are not entitled to choose the lofty and to reject the derogatory one. One of these conceptions is about as low and inadmissible as a rude and violent people ever framed for themselves in their most uncultivated times. The other is the noblest and purest that human imagination ever reached. There is the God who showed his " back part " to Moses ; and the " God who is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth." There is tlie God who wrestled bodily with Jacob and who fed with Abraham in liis tent ; and the God whom the heaven of heavens cannot con- tain, much less a temple made with hands. Tliere is the God who talked with Moses face to face as a man talketh to his friend; and the God "whom no man hath seen or can see," whom "no man can see and live." There is Jehovah, who was the national and selected God of the Hebrews ; and there is our Father in heaven, who dwell- eth in light inaccessible and full of glory, who is the dwelling-place of all generations, the Father of the spirits of all flesh. There is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob ; and there is the God of Isaiah, of Paul, of Christ. There is the jealous, angry, and relentless God of the rudest Jewish fancy, appeased by sacrifices and whole burnt-offerings, repenting him of what he had done, of what he had threatened, of what he had promised, un- just according even to our poor lumian scales of equity and righteousness ; and there is the God of better days ' and truer conceptions, to whom whole burnt-oflerings TRUTH VEESUS EDIFICATION. 327 and sacrifices were a weariness and an abomination, with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, long-suf- fering and plenteous in mercy, loving all his creatures, and loving most especially those whom he is compelled to chasten, forgiving till seventy times seven, giving his only begotten Son to die for the world that he would save, — the great I AM, who shall wipe away all tears from all eyes, and whom the pure in heart shall be privi- leged to see at last. But, if Dr. Colenso's proposition is not to be established, — if books like Dr. Colenso's are not to be written to make that proposition good, — it will continue to be in the power and the practice of every bishop, priest, and deacon to declare that the one con- ception is as true, as grand, as ennobling as the other, since both came equally from God, and both are equally inspired. We have spoken plainly, broadly, and, as many will say, shockingly, because only thus can we awaken men's minds to the incommensurable juagnitude and moment of the point at issue, — a point which Mr. Arnold has so strangely and suicidally endeavored to cover up. Sui- cidally, we say ; for while he blames Dr. Colenso for not separating the living gold from the concealing dross of the Pentateuch, discerning the former and clinging to it, and cherishing it as the essence of the whole, he will not see that the Bishop, more methodical, more humble, and more comprehensive than himself, is laboring to demon- strate the denied and denounced rijlU of doing this very thing. TIME. THE looseness of idea which is traceable in many of oar semi-philosophic phrases and opinions oflers a curious subject for reflection. Habitually, partly from men- tal indolence, probably, partly from inherent unscientific carelessness of mind, we are satisfied with aj)2^roaches to an idea about, or in explanation of, the phenomena which catch our attention, — with what Dr. Chalmers used to call "the inkling of an idea," — not so much with half an idea as with the raw materials of an idea. We are content witli feeling that a conception, and probably a true conception, lurks under the expression.^ \ve hear and repeat ; and under cover of this inarticulate sentiment (for it is usually nothing more) we absolve ourselves from the exertion of analyzing the conception, embodying it in appropriate language, or even carrying it so far as dis- tinct and expressible notions. We use a phrase, and then fancy we have done a thing,, — have elucidated a fact or given utterance to an idea. AYe employ words, not to express tliought, nor (as Talleyrand suggested) to conceal it, but to liide its absence, and to. escape its toil. No word has been oftener made to do duty in this way than Time. We constantly say — speaking of material things — that "Time" destroys buildings, effaces inscrip- tions, removes landmarks, and the like. In the same way, — speaking of higher matters appertaining to men and nations, to moral and intellectual plienoniena, — we are accustomed to say that " Time " obliterates impres- sions, cures faults, solaces grief, heals wounds, extin- guishes animosities; as well as that under its inlJu- TIME. 329 ence empires decay, people grow enliglitened, errors get troddan out, brute natures become humanized, and so on, — tliat the world " makes progress," in short. Now \vhat do we mean when we speak thus ; or do most of iis maan anything ? What are the mighty and resistless agencies hidden under those four letters, and embodied in, or implied by, that little word ? Sir Humphry Davy, in those Consolations in Travel which worthily solaced "the last days of a philosopher," endeavored to answer tliis question as regards mere yjhys- ical phenomana. He analyzes the several causes which, in the course of ages, contribute and combine to produce the ruins which cover the surface of the earth, and most of which are more lovely in their decay than ever ia their pristine freshness. Putting aside all results tracea- ble to the hand of man, to the outrages of barbarian in- vaders, or the greed of native depredators, — leaving out of view, too, the destruction wrought from time to time by lightning, the tempest, and the earthquake, — he shows that the principal among those elements of de- struction, which operate slowly and surely, generation after generation, are traceable to heat and gravitation. More precisely, they may be classed under two heads, the chemical and the mechanical, usually acting in combina- tion, and the former much the most powerful of the two. The contraction and expansion of the materials of which all buildings are composed, due to changes of tempera- ture, operate to loosen their cohesion, especially where wood or iron enters largely into their composition ; and in northern climates, wherever water penetrates among the stones, its peculiarity of sudden and great expansion when freezing renders it one of the most effective agen- cies of disintegration known. The rain that tails year by year, independent of its ceaseless mechanical eflect in carrying off minute fragments of all perishal)le materi- als, is usually, and especially near cities, more or less charged with carbonic acid, the action of which upon the carbonate of lime, which forms so large an element in most stones, is sometimes portentously rapid, as indeed 330 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. we see every day around us. The air, again, through the instrumentality of the oxygen which is one of its com- ponent parts, is about the most powerful agency of de- struction furnished by tlie wliole armory of nature ; it corrodes the iron by which the stones arc clamped to- gether ; it causes the gradual decny of • tlie timber of which the roofs of buildings are usually constructed, so that we seldom find any traces of them in the more an cient remains which have come down to us. Thus the great principle of organic life becomes also, in its inevi- table and eternal action, the great agent also in decay and dissolution. Then follows what we may term the unin- tentional or accidental agencies of living things. As soon as the walls and pediments and columns of a statue or a temple have lost their polished suiface through the operation of the chemical influences we have enumer- ated, the seeds of lichens and mosses, and other parasitic plants, which are constantly floating in the atmosphere, settle in the roughnesses, grow, decay, and decompose, form soil, attract moisture, and are followed by other and stronger plants, whose roots force their way into the crev- ices thus formed by " Time," and end by wrenching asunder the damaged and disintegrated blocks of marble. The animal creation succeeds the vegetable and aids its destructive operations ; the fox burrows, the insect bores, the ant saps the foundations of the building ; and thus by a series of causes, all of them in the ordinary and undying course of nature, the most magnificent edifices ever raised by the genius, the piety, and the industry of man are brought to an end, as by a fixed and irreversible decree. And this is "Time," so far as its physical agen- cies are concerned. When we turn from the influence of Time on the work of man's hands to consider its influence on the man himself, we find a very different mode of operation. " Time " with individuals acts partly through the me- dium of our capacities and powers, but more, probably, through our defects, and the feebleness and imperfection of our nature. It ought not, perhaps, to be so, but it is TIME. 331 SO. Time heals our wounds and brings comfort to our sorrows, but liov: ? '^ It is beneath the dignity of think- ing beings " (says Bolingbroke) " to trust to time and dis- traction as the only cure for grief, — to Avait to be happy till we can forget that we are miserable, and owe to the weakness of our faculties a result for which we ought to be indebted to their strength." Yet it is precisely thus that " thinking beings " generally act, or find that " Time " acts with tliem. Half the healing influence of Time de- pends solely upon the decay of memory. It is a law of nature — and like all nature's laws, in the aggregate of its effects a beneficent one — that, while the active pow- ers strengthen with exercise, passive impressions fade and grow feeble with repetition. The physical blow or prick inflicted on a spot already sore with previous inju- ries is doubly felt ; the second moral stroke falls upon a part which has become partially benumbed and deadened by the first. Then new impressions, often far feebler, often far less worthy of attention, pass like a wave over the older ones, cover them, cicatrize them, push them quietly into the background. We could not retain our griefs in their first freshness, even if we would. As Mr. Arnold says : — " This is the curse of life : that not A nobler, calmer train Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain. " But each day brings its petty dust, Our soon choked souls to fill ; And we forget because we must. And not because we will." In a word, we do not overcome our sorrow c we only over-live it. It is succeeded, not subdued ; covered up, mossed over, like the temples of Egypt or the tombs of tlie Campagna, not controlled, transmuted, reasoned down. It is the same, too, usually with our faults. "Time" cures them, we say. It would be more correct to say that it removes the temptation to them. Sometimes it is only that pleasures cease to please ; we grow wise and 832 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. good through mere satiety, — if wisdom and goodness that come to us through such an operation of " Time " Ije not a most fallacious and cynical misnomer. The pas- sions that led our youth astray die out with age from the slow clianges in our animal Irame, from purely physical modifications o^' our constitution ; the appetites and desires that spring i'roin the hot hlood and abounding vigor of our early years no longer torment the languid pulse and phlegmatic temperament of after life ; the world and the devil, not the ilesh, are then the tempters to be prayed against. The frailties of " Cheerful creatures whose most sinful deeds Were but the overb^ating of the heart," come easily and naturally to an end when from the dulled emotions and impaired vitality of advancing age we feel nothing vividly and desire nothing strongly. Time does not so much cure our faults as hill them. Sometimes — often, indeed, we would hope — Time brings experience in its train. We learn that vice " does not pay." We discover by degrees that the sin is far less sweet than we fancied, and that it costs much dearer than we had bargained for. We grow better cal- culators than we were ; we reflect more profoundly ; we measure and weigh more accurately. Occasionally, no doubt, " Time " operates through a nobler class of influ- ences. The observation of life shows us the extensive misery wrought by all wrong-doing ; we find those around us whom we love better than ourselves ; and affection and philanthropy gradually initiate us into vir- tue and self-denial. Growing sense aids the operations of dulled- sensibility ; we become less passionate and fierce as our nerves become less irritable ; we drop our animosities as failing memory ceases to remind us of the ofiences which aroused them, and as a calmer judgment enables us to measure those offences more justly ; we are less willing to commit crimes or neglect duties or incur condemnation for the sake of worldly ad\ancement, as we discover how little happiness that advancemtnt brings us, and as we reflect for how short a period Me TIME. 333 can hope to enjoy it. But, through all and to the last, the physical intluence of " Time " upon our bodily frame is the best ally of its moral influence on our character and our intelligence. Time brings mellowness to man much as it brings beauty to ruins, — by the operation of decay. We melt and fade into the gentle and the good, just as palaces and temples crumble into the picturesque. When we come to speak of nations, and of national progress, the idea of " Time " embraces a far wider range of influences, both as to number and duration, which we can only glance at. Time, as it operates on empires and on peoples, on their grandeur and tlieir dfjcadence, in- cludes the aggregate of the efforts, separate or combined, of every individual among them, through a long succes- sion of decades and of centuries. Mr. JMatthew Arnold, in the least sound of his many sagacious and suggestive writings, — his inconsiderate attack upon Colenso, — speaks much of the Zeit-Geist, the Spirit of the Age, and urges us to trust to its slow and irresistible intluence, and not to seek to hasten it ; tliat is, as far as we could understand him, to abstain from all those acts and efibrts of which its influence is made up. Mr. Lecky, again, in his admirable and philosophical work. The History of Rationalism, especially in the chapter on magic and witchcraft, writes as if the decay of superstition, which he clironicles so well, were owing to a sort of natural spontaneous growth of the human mind, and its added knowledge, and not to any distinct process of reasoning, or to the effects of the teacliing of any particular men, — out of which alone in truth such growth could come. But " Time," in reality, when used in speaking of na- tions, means nothing but the sum of all the influences which, in the course of time, individual laborers in the field of discovery, invention, reasoning, and administra- tion have brought to bear upon the world. In the ^\■ork of religious truth and freedom, " Time " means the blood of many martyrs, the toil of many brains, slow steps made good through infinite research, small heights and spots of vantage-ground won from the retiring forces of 334 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. ignorance and prejudice l)y generations of stern struggle and still sterner j^atience, gleams of light and moments of inspiration interspersed amid years of darkness and despondency, thousands of combatants falling on the field, thousands of laborers dying at the ])lougli, — with here and there a Moses mounting the heights of Pisgah to survey, through the mist of tears and with the eye of faith, the promised land which his followers may reach at last. In material progress, in those acts of lii'e which in their aggregate make up the frame-work and oil the wheels of our complicated civilization, " Time " signifies the hard-won discoveries of science, augmented by the accessions of each succeeding age from Thales and Archi- medes to Newton and Davy ; the practical sagacity and applicative ingenuity of hundreds of inventors like Ark- wright and Watt, Stephenson and Wheatstone (to whom we owe the cotton manufacture and the steam-engine, the railway and the telegraph), as well as the humbler and unremembered labors of the thousands whose minor contrivances paved the way for their great completors ; the innumerable contributions, age after age, of the pro- fessional or speculative men who at last have made medi- cine and surgery what they now are ; finally,- tlie daily, unacknowledged, half-unconscious, because routine, exer- tions of the rulers and administrators who have rendered these great victories of peace possible because they have enabled those who achieved them to labor in security and in hope. As far as " Time " has made the world, or any nation in it, wiser and better, it is because wise and good men have devoted that brief fragment of Time which was allotted to them here below to the task of en- lightening and encouraging their fellow-men, to render- ing virtue easier and wisdom more attractive, to remov- ing obstacles in the path of moral progress, to dragging up the masses towards the position which the elite had previously attained. Where nations, once in thraldom, have won liberty and independence, it is not the cold abstraction of " Time " that has enfranchised them, but tyrants that have so misused time as to make sufferers TIME. 335 desperate ; prophets who have struck out the enthusiasui that makes sufferers daring because hopeful, and patriots who have been found willing to die for an idea and an aim. And, to look on the reverse of the picture, when in its ceaseless revolutions "Time," which once brought pro- gress and development, shall have brought decay and dissolution, the agencies in operation and their modus operandi present no difficult analysis. Sometimes the same rough energy which made nations conquerors at first makes them despots and oppressors in the end, and rouses that hatred and thirst for vengeance which never waits in vain for opportunities, if only it wait long enough ; and the day of peril surprises them with a host of enemies and not a single friend. Usually the wealth which enterprise and civilization liave accumulated brings luxury and enervation in its train ; languor and corrup- tion creep over the people's powers, exertion grows dis- tasteful, and danger repels where it formerly attracted ; degenerate freemen hire slaves to do their work, and mercenaries to tight their battles : and no strength or vitality of patriotism is left to resist the attacks of sounder and hardier barbarians. Occasionally, in the process of territorial aggrandizement, a nation outgrows its administrative institutions ; the governmental system and the ruling faculties, which sufficed for a small state, prove altogether unequal to the task of managing a great one, and the empire or republic falls to pieces from lack of cohesive power within or coercive power above. Not unfrequently, it may be, the mere progress of rational but imperfect civilization brings its peculiar dangers and sources of disintegration ; the lower and less qualified classes in a nation, always inevitably the most numerous, rise in intelligence and wealth, and grow prosperous and powerful ; institutions naturally become more and more democratic ; if the actual administration of public affairs does not pass into the hands of the masses or their nom- inees, at least the policy of the nation is moulded in ac- cordance with the views of the less sagacious and more 330 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS, passionate part of the connnunity ; the mischief is done unconsciously -but iiTetiie\ably, and the catastrophe conies without bein^ cither intended or foreseen. In other cases, states and monarchies come to an end simply because they have no lony;er a raison d'etre, — because they never had in them the elements of perma- nence ; because destructive or disintegrating causes, long in operation, have at last ripened into adequate strength. The Ottoman Power is falling because the military spirit which ibunded it has died away, and it has no other point of superiority to the people over whom it rules : because the Turks are stagnant and stationary, and the Greeks are an fond a progressive though a corrupt and. undeveloped race. Austria, too, a while ago seemed crumbling to pieces, because composed of a host of in- congruous elements, and because neither the genius to fuse them nor the vigor to coerce them could be found among their rulers. Is there, then, no permanence in any earthly thing ? Must nations forever die out under the slow corrosion of " Time," as surely as men and the monuments men rear ? Is there no principle of vitality strong enough to defy at once assaults from without and disintegration from within ; no elixir vitcc discoverable by the accu- mulated sagacity and experience- of centuries, by means of which the essential elements of national life can be re- newed as fast as they consume, and the insidious causes of decay watched and guarded against the instant they begin to operate, and counteracted ^jari ^9fl,ss7t with their operation ? In a word, cannot the same wisdom and self- knowledge which tell nations ichy and how they degener- ate and die, discover antidotes against degeneracy and death ? Or is Fate too mighty for human resistance ? — that is, to speak more piously and definitely, has Provi- dence decreed that the progress of the race shall proceed by a succession of states and peo})les, and not by the adaptation and perfectation of existing ones ; and must nations perforce forego the noble egotism of immortal life, and be content to live vicariously in their ofispriiig TIME. 337 and inheritors ? The question is of infinitely small mo- ment except to our imaginations, but there is surely no reason why the dearer and more human hope should not be realized, thougli we may be ages distant from the day of realization. We have all the preserving salt that lies latent in the true essence of Christianity, as yet so little understood ; we are learning to comprehend, far better than the ancients and our ancestors, in what rational patriotism consists, and wherein lie the real interests of republics and of empires ; all the needed pharmacopceia of policy is within our reach as soon as w^e thoroughly know our constitutions, and have the virtu6 and the nerve to apply the remedies in time. If there had been Conservators of the Coliseum, versed in all the distinctive and reparative agencies of Nature, vigilantly watching the one and promptly applying the other, the Coliseum would have been standing iu its strength and its beauty to this hour. 15 GOOD PEOPLE. THEPtE are more good people in the world than is commonly believed, — or, rather, more people are entitled to be called " good " than those to whom it is the custom to apply and to confine the epithet. The consciously pious and the ostensibly philanthropic have been accustomed to think of themselves as, if not exclu- sively, at least peculiarly, the good, — the *' Salt of the Earth, the virtuous few AVho season humankind " ; and usually the world has taken them at their own valu- ation, and has tacitly conceded to them a sort of patent for the use of the adjective in question. They have, as it were, been diploma-ed and laureated to this effect, stamped with the Hall Mark, decorated with the cross of this Legion of Honor. No doubt they deserve it, so far as fallible and blundering mortals can; we have not a word to say in derogation, where they are sincerely de- vout and honestly and actively benevolent. It is natural they should feel warranted in preferring the claim ; and it is natural the world should admit it without demur. The religious man is conscious of loving and worship- ping God, who is the source and centre of all good ; and the philanthropist is conscious of loving and of trying to serve his fellow-creatures, and of striving to become the instrument of carrying out God's designs of good towards them. Both are pointedly and directly laboring to make men happier and better ; the first is endeavoring to he good, and the second to do good ; both, therefore, have a right to think themselves, and to be thought by GOOD PEOPLE. 339 others, " good people." But several considerations must be weighed before we can consent to regard them as the only good people, or even as the goodest people extant. We need not speak of those wliose benevolence, how- ever restless and untiring, is so prompted and alloyed by vanity as to be in truth rather a pardonable weakness than a praiseworthy virtue; nor of those with whom it is an impulse rather than an aim, an effort more to re- lieve their own emotions than to assuage the sufferings or supply the wants of others ; nor again of those in whom it is so blended with conceit and ignorance that they usually do mischief when striving to do good, whose shallow notions never dream of mistrusting their own sagacity, when they know that their feelings are kindly, and fancy that their motives are pure; who shrink from the indispensable fatigue and delay of preliminary re- flection and research, and deem that philanthropy is an easy profession, needing nothing but a warm heart and an open purse. Yet these three classes constitute, it is probable, four fifths of the recognized philanthropists. Nor need we speak of those self-deceivers, whose religion, geimine in its way, no doubt, is only a somewhat more far-sighted and less ignoble egotism, — what Coleridge happily described as " other- worldliness," — a self-seek- iug, whose reward is placed in a loftier sphere, and fixed at a higher rate, but is an undisguised self-seeking still ; men and women who can never rise to the idea of "serving God for naught," and whose devotion and pious observances are little else than a sagacious and safe investment. We have in view at present the simply and disinterestedly pious and the purely and truly beneficent, to whom no one would deny or grudge the praise of being indisputably " good people " ; and all we wish to say is, that there are many other sorts of people, equally good if judged by simplicity and purity of purpose, — perhaps more good if judged by tlie issue of their labors, — wliose claim to share tlie epithet is yet rarely put forward and not always recog- nized. 340 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. There can be no question that doing good, in some one or other of the many tliousand ways in which good may be done, is the purpose for wliich we are sent upon the earth and suffered to remain there. Our position is that "good people," and those who are inclined to canonize them, take habitually far too narrow a view of what " do- ing good " is, — a view sometimes so narrow as to be al- together erroneous. Their mistake lies in assuming tliat those who do not do good, or who are not good, in their way, are not being or doing good at all. To do good is to carry out God's intentions in tlie creation of the human race, to co-operate with his designs, to work towards his ideal, — in fact and in fine, to assist in the progress of the world, using the word " progress " in its truest and highest sense. Everything by which man is ripened, purified, or benefited, by which society is im- proved, upheld, and advanced, by which life is rendered less " illiberal and dismal," by which humanity is really civilized and carried forward nearer to its full de^•elop- ment and its widest conquests, is right, is needed ; and every man who does any of these things in a pious spirit, with a hearty will, in a workmanlike fashion, is " doing good." An incalculable multiplicity of agencies go to make up the sum of human progress. Poetry, music, good go^■ernment, sound finance, masterly engineer- ing, mechanical invention, scientific discovery, patient thougiit, are all needed for the well-being and perfecta- tion of civilized life, and for the development of our capacities of achievement and enjoyment ; and every man who pursues any one of these callings, or of their countless subsidiary ones, conscientiously and thoroughly, and to the best of his power, is just as truly " a fellow- "worker together with God in exploring and giving efi'ect to the beneficent tendencies of Kature" as the mission- ary, the ostensible philanthropist, or the cloistered nun. Probably we may go yet further and open wider still the boundary of practical good deeds ; the merchant, and manufacturer, and shipwright, and all the honest and diligent workmen whom they respectively employ, may GOOD PEOPLE. 341 with equal truth claim " to be about their Father's l)usi- iiess," to be carrying out the divine plans, to be toiling in their fit vocation for tlie future of mankind, since with- out them progress could scarcely have been ; and pro- ductive industry, and the commerce that spreads tlie results of that industry from shore to shore, have long been recognized as among the most efficient civilizing agents upon earth. To none of these men or these classes, then, — neither to the poet, nor the thinker, nor the statesman, nor the inventor or discoverer, nor the en- gineer, nor the sailor, nay, not even to the humblest pri- vates who serve under tliese chiefs, — is the pious man or tlie philanthropist entitled to say, " I am doing God's work, I am doing good, I am religious, — you are not." All are fellow-laborers ; all are indispensable to the grand aggregate residt ; and nothing would seem neces- sary to constitute a man truly and worthily a faithful servant of his IMaster's will, a co-operator with the Most High, — a "doer of good," in short, — than that of the tliousand agencies which carry on the world's life, and oil the world's wheels, and assist the world's advance, he should choose that for which he is best fitted, or which is most obviously incumbent on him, or which lies nearest to him, and should pursue it with steady effort, and, as far as human weakness will permit, with a single mind. Qui lahorat oral. Every true toiler in an honest calling is toiling for the onward march and mending of humanity ; and not .the less so that he is often half unconscious — sometimes quite unconscious — of his noble mission, and would be amazed to be told that he was " doing good " Avhen he fancied he was only doing his duty ; not the less so, too, that he usually thinks only of the next step and the immediate issue, and seldom or never of the annexed dignity or the ulti- mate and indirect reward. The Kuler of the Universe has martyrs everywhere and in every cause, who never plume themselves upon their martyrdom, soldiers who never pause to think that they are " fighting a good fight," but are 342 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. "Content, like men at amis, to cope Each with his fronting foe " ; — laborers by the thousand wlio go about " That daily ronnrl, that common task. Which furnish all we ought to ask," never dreaming that they are thus ranking among God's fellow-laborers, and therefore never inflated or intoxi- cated by the dream ; faithful and zealous servants who do His will without putting on his liveiy ; following his point- ing without a thought for the honor or a care about the wages, and mixing neither eye nor lip service with their tasks. The truth is, that we seldom realize the vast multipli- city of converging contributions needful for the advance- ment and welfare of humanity; all the conflicts, the ventures, the struggles, the sacrifices which conduce to the great result ; to which the simple unreflecting efforts of the private who merely stands sentinel or marches in the conquering ranks are as indispensable as the skill of the general who arranges the plan of the campaign, or the genius of the ruler or philosophic statesman wlio keeps his eye upon the ultimate purpose, understands the best way to its attainment, and can distinctly measure and direct towards it the actions of the undiscerning multi- tude. In order that the world should make progress, that each generation should be happier and better than its predecessor, f that each to-morrow Find us further than to-day," it is necessary, in the first place, that more food should be provided, and should be more amply and equally dis- tributed ; and every man, therefore, who facilitates the processes of agriculture by machinery or science, or who renders labor more efficient, is not only a fellow-worker in the great common cause, but a fellow- worker with- out whose contribution that cause could not possibly advance. It is a beautiful and salutary arrangement which we seldom reflect on as we ought, that as a rule men can only become rich and great by supplying some GOOD PEOPLE. 343 want of their fellow-men, by doing some work for otliers which otliers need and are willing to pay for, be that work moral guidance or material provision. We cannot rise to command except by stooping to serve ; we cannot obtain conspicuous station among men or power over them without in some way or other rendering ourselves necessary or useful to them ; we can scarcely seek our own fortune without, intentionally or unconsciously, ministering to others, and thereby under overruling di- rection " doing good." If the son is to be more comforta- bly clad and more wholesomely housed than his father, if the poor man's home is to be made more decent and more lovable as time goes on, think for a moment of the incalculable services which the cotton-spinner, and the cloth-weaver, and the inventor of better bricks, and the builder of roomier and firmer dwellings, and the contri- ver of skilful drainage and ready water-supply, render to these ends, — each in his respective line, and each look- ing only to the immediate aim, and not, or only casually, to the ultimate result ; and consider then whetlier we are not guilty of a curious oversight and partiality in concentrating our admiration and applause so exclusi\'ely upon the testator who founds almshouses, and the Dorcas who cuts out garments and gives them gratis or half gratis to the poor. " Cotton-spinning " (says Mr. Carlyle) " is the clothing of the naked in its result, — the triumph of mind over matter in its means." Think, again, of the countless toil and the consummate skill of tlie adminis- trator or the legislator who manages that the social ma- chinery of the state shall work smoothly and securely, so that the providers of food, clothing, and shelter shall be able to go steadily forward with their work, and do honor to the humblest functionary in the complicated organism of government, if only he be faithful and ca- pable as well as humble. Then turn to the men of sci- ence, whether abstract or applied: were Newton and La]jlace, think yovi, less truly " doers of good," less grand philanthropists, less undeniable or less indispensable con- tributors to the well-being of their race, than John How- 344 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS, ard, Xavier, or Las Casas ? "Which have alleviated most misery, prolonged or preserved most life, Avijjed Awny most tears, Harvey and Jenner, the inventor of chloro- form, the skilful surgeon and the wise physician, or the charitable magnates and missionaries who are be- lieved to "go about doing good," and whom, therefore, we are prone to regard as especially, if not exclusi\'oly, the imitators of our ])ivine Master ? Or, again, take the princes of engineering genius, or some grand invent- ors, such as James Watt, Stephenson, and Wheatstone ; count up what they have done for mankind, how they have multiplied and extended its capacities of action as well as enjoyment ; and then ask yourself what osten- sible philanthropist — nay, what generation of ])hilan- thropists — can compare their achievements with the blessings conferred by the steam-engine, the raihvay, and the telegraph. Yet these men, it is probable, seldom re- flected definitely on the good they were doing to the ^^■orld, or measured in imagination half its range, or prided themseh'es consciously ui)on being benefactors of their species. They drew their inspiration i'rom a source less tainted with the fumes of even a noble egotism. They loved their science for its own sake ; they simply obeyed the sound dictates of a sound nature ; they exer- cised their talents, they followed their instincts, tliinking of their work, not for themsehes, nor even much probably of their work's vilterior results of civilizing beneficence ; but, in acting thus, they did what God had sent them into the world to do, and so, half unconsciously, but still re- ligiously because straightforwardly and dutifully, fulfilled the purposes of their existence. They may, some of them, have been half Pagans ; they may have thought little of prayer, and less of Church ; they may seldom have given so much as a passing reflection of self-complacent bene\ o- lence to the fellow-creatures in Avhose cause they were thus ploddiugly and serenely spending life and strength ; yet nevertheless the Creative Spirit has had few more in- telligent instruments, more devoted messengers, more ef- ficient fellow-workers. GOOD PEOPLE. 345 " In tlieir own task all their powers pouring, These attained the mighty life ye see." One of the commonest and most deep-seated, and per- haps not the least pernicious fallacy in our estimate of relative " goodness " lies in our disj)osition to rank nega- tive above j)*5sitive virtue, — abstinence from wrong above active duty and distinguished service. There is surely a higher and completer decalogue than the purely prohibitory one of Sinai, taught us by One who surpassed and superseded ]\Ioses. " Thou shalt " appeals to nobler natures and befits a more advanced civilization than "Thou shalt not." The early Israelites, just emerging from the double degradation of semi-ljarbarism and of slavery, and soiled with the brutal passions and the slimy sins belonging to both conditions, had first to be taught tlie difficult lessons of self-denial and forbearance. On Cliristians is laid the loftier obligation of active and laborious achievement. It is much for the fierce ap- petites and feeble wills of savages to abstain from the grosser indulgences of the temper and the flesh, — not to steal, not to kill, not to lust, not to lie. But the civiliza- tion of a cultured and awakened age can rest content in no such formal or meagre conception of moral duties. It cannot acquiesce in mere self-regarding excellence. It feels that there is something at once loftier, more gener- ous, and more imperative than the asceticism which aims simply at the elaboration and development of the spiritual possibilities of a man's own nature ; and that to serve others, even in miry byways, in menial capacities, in damaging and revolting conditions, is a worthier and more Christian vocation than coddling one's individual soul. Faire son devoir is, after all, a nobler purpose than faire son saint. The indolent and timid natures who find abstinence safer and easier than action, " Whose sole achievement is to leave undone," who shirk dangerous duties because they dread exposure to moral risk, who are content to do no active good if, by fencing themselves carefully about with a cordon sanitaire 15* 31G LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. of rules {Hid cautions, they can manage to creep through life in a sort of clever quarantine, and so do no mischief and commit no sins, — can scarcely, in any healthy esti- mate of relative excellence, be entitled to rank ^vith the bolder spirits who, perhaps over-recklessly, despise such egotistic valetudinarianism, and rusli out into the con- flicts of the world to acquit themselves like men ; who, often wandering from the path, often falling in the race, often defeated in the combat, sometimes even soiled Ijy the contact with evil and with guilt, yet, in spite of failures and of falls, press on with unflagging vigor to tlie end, and so emerge at last, sorely wounded it may be, with their armor stained and their tempers roughened if not hardened by the effort and the strife, but having at least achieved something for others by the wa}'", and with their faces still set "as though they uvvld go to Jerusalem." Unless the unsophisticated instincts of mankind are veiy far astray, our deepest gratitude is due, not to the jaire and sinless, but to the greatly-daring and the strongly- doing ; not to the monk in his convent or the ascetic on his pillar, but to the warrior in a good cause, to the ad- venturer in a grand enterprise, to the laborer in a noble work. " I cannot " (says Milton) " praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue that never sallies out and sees its ad- versary, but slinks out of the race where the immortal garland is to be run for, — not without dust and heat." A greater than Milton has comforted us by the assurance that much is forgiven to those who love much ; that the active service of men (which is charity) covers a multi- tude of sins, and is more and loftier than creeds ; and that the talent laid up in a white napkin, and so scrupu- lously kept out of harm's way, reaps no praise and bears no fruit ; while the talent that is made to fructify in commerce, in administration, or otlierwise, earns wealth first and recompense and honor afterwards. Surely, in that righteous estimate and just award which we all anti- cipate at " the great gathering of souls," a man's deeds will be set against his omissions and liis failures, his wanderings and his falls, — what he has done and done well against GOOD PEOPLE. 34; what he has left undone or done amiss, — the efforts he has made and the services he has rendered against the sins he has committed and the temptations to which he has succumbed. Surely, too, as Lord Erskine pleaded (in tliat grand speech which has become a classic in our lan- guage), it is the " general scope " of the Book of our ex- istence by whicli we shall be judged then and by which we ought to be estimated now, — not solely, not chiefly even, " those frail passages which checker the volume of the brightest and the best spent life, but which mercy obscures from the eye of justice, and w^hich repentance blots out forever." It often happens that the truest benefactors of man- kind are precisely those to whom an unthinking and un- grateful world is least willing to concede the title. The beneficent, as distinguished from the benevolent, — those who do good, not those who merely wish it, — are in many cases the stern, inflexible administrators of a sound rule, rather than the soft-hearted who would relax or con- travene its operation to meet individual instances of suffer- ing or hardship. These rigid men of principle have a hard time of it here below ; there are few to whom we are more habitually inijust. Yet nothing is so capable of proof as that they do more good, prevent or mitigate more wretchedness, eradicate more evil, than perhaps any other characters. Nay, further: a great portion of their work — for which they are hated and maligned — consists in counteracting and undoing the mischief wrought by the yielding susceptibilities of the charitably tender, who are praised and petted for their self-indul- gent malefactions. The " good people " who administer the noxious but delicious anodyne thank God that they are not as the " unsympathizing and cold-hearted," who insist upon the healing drug, the self-denying system, or the needful but painful operation. Yet usually tliere can be as little doubt which of the two are the world's real friends, as which are the truly " good " in effort and in feeling. The stern administrator of the riohteous and 348 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. salutary law curbs and denies those njischievous and sickly sensibilities which the maudlin man of feeling simply yields to and fosters. The one indulges his senti- ment at the cost of his fellow-men : the other controls his sentiment for their good. I'robably, however, if we take as our measure the amount and the unalloyed character of the good done, and the degree of effort involved in doing it, tlie " good people" par excellence must be the Thinkers, the men of intelligence and research. He who destroys a fallacy, who eradicates a superstition, who establishes a healing principle or a prolific truth, who in any way adds to tlie knowledge in the world and reduces the amount of error, confers a benefit of which the extent is sim])ly incalcu- lable, because its duration and its field of operation are absolutely illimitable. If we trace back efiects to their ultimate causes, we shall find that most of our vice and nearly all our misery have their source in ignorance or misconception ; in not knowing, or not fully realizing, the physical and moral laws on which our well-being de- pends ; in not understanding, in this our day, the things which belong unto our peace ; in following after false gods, and blinding ourselves with miserable and mislead- ing creeds. The fierce passions and the wild desires of men never could have raged as they have done through countless generations, never could have wrought the dev- astation they have spread over the social and the moral world, if false doctrines had not been devised to justify and canonize the passions, and if baseless theories and crassa ignorantia had not combined to veil the inev- itable consequences of the indulged desires. The pe- culiarity, too, of the good worked out by the diffusion of sound knowledge and the establishment of pure truth is that it is usually, except perhaps for a brief period, quite without drawback or alloy. The man Avho founds a charitable institution may be doing vast mischief along with a minimum of good ; the man who discovers a scien- tific fact, or proves and procures general receptitjn ior a philosophic principle, bequeathes his blessing to the world GOOD PEOPLE. 349 " without money and without price/' He adds liis mite forever to the a,t>'gregate possessions, the joint inlierit- ance, of man, and he adds a mite which is in its nature and essence healing, beneficent, and fructifying, and which no opposition can more than temporarily render otherwise. The spccifirMlly philanthropic have, we all know, often been among the saddest mischief-makers that complicated mo J em society has nourished in its bosom, and in a thousand instances, and by a tliousand proofs, have created more misery than they have relieved. What religion and the specifically pious have done to comfort sorrow, to relieve distress, to confer moral strength, to inspire great deeds, to support " majestic pains," it is true we can never fairly estimate ; but all history is full of the crimes, and cruelties, and terrible inilictions, and heinous wrongs wrought, not only in the name of relig- ion, but under the undeniable inspiration of its sincerely followed, but deplorably misread spirit. If, at last, char- ity and faith liave begun to be verily beneficent ; if the former has grown wise and self-controlled, and the latter rational, tolerant, and just; it is to the spread of knowl- edge and the laljors of the Thinker that we owe their })uri- ' fication. It is the men of intellect who have taught the men of feeling and the men of piety truly to " do good." There is yet another class of " good people " wdiom we once heard described as doing good hy cffiitvia. The definition created considerable amusement at the time, yet no other could have been so apt or just. They do good by being good. Their natures are so beautiful, and withal so full of a rich and beneficent vitality, that it is sufficient for them to live in order to diffuse happiness around them. They seem to radiate virtue and joy ; we are grateful to them (to borrow the well-known phrase sarcastically used by Beauniarchais) jjarccqiLils se sont doimds la 23'^inc de naitre. Their characters are so well balanced, their dis- positions so affectionate, their tempers so sweet and gentle, that they disseminate and inspire peace and good-will without effort and without consciousness : — 350 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. " Glad souls, without reproach or blot, "Who do His -will, and know it not." Selfishness and anger cannot live in tlieir presence ; their mere companionship pours oil upon troubled waters and balm into wounded spirits ; their goodness and kindliness are, as it were, catching. As Keble expresses it, "They Kecni to dwell Above this earth, — so rich a spell Floats round their i)ath where'er they move, From hopes fulfilled and mutual love." Yet, though about the best, they are by no means always the happiest of God's creatures. Often, indeed, they have known a deeper than common sorrow ; only they have survived it, or conquered it, or assimilated it, — turned it, that is, into a blessing and a nutriment. " The serenity of soul, Which of itself shows immortality," is forever mirrored in their "clear calm brows," and speaks unmistakably of peace attained, — not the peace which brooded over Eden, but that which crowned Gethsemane. The philanthropic and religious will, no doubt, demur to this attempt, not so much to push them from their ped- estal, as to assert the claims of others to share it witli them. They will plead that they do good directly and of dehberate purpose aforethouglit ; while the rest of the candidates named for the same civic crown only do good imdesignedly and as an incident to their main end and ordinary work ; that there must be a wide difference in desert ^nd estimation between the man whose distinct vocation it is to benefit his fellows, *and the man from whose honorable pursuit of his own vocation good to the world, through the wise arrangements of Providence, naturally results; and that it is a misjudgment to rank in the same class those who place the good of others be- fore tlieir eyes as a definite ohjcct, and those who only entail it, and perhaps do not always foresee it, as a con- sequence of their actions. But this plea, though not wdiolly without force, is habitually stretched much too far. Of every man who performs the task assigned him. GOOD PEOPLE. 351 or the task for which he is best fitted, in the complex machinery of life, and who does this in a straightforward temper and in a workmanlike fashion, two things may- be safely predicated : first, that he is doing his duty, which is always a righteous and sometimes a noble act ; and, secondly, that, in order to do it, he has to use effort and to overcome temptation of some sort, whether it be the temptation of indolence or that of pleasure : and in most cases the philanthropist or the missionary does no more. No true or worthy work of any kind can be accomplished without encountering difficulties, and sur- mounting obstacles, and facing dangers, and putting forth the qualities of energy and perseverance ; without, in a word, a steady resolution and a persistent self-control which are worthy of all honor. In many instances of the comparatively incidental benefactors of mankind who Jiave been mentioned, serving their fellow-creatures and doing God's work- has been their ultimate though not their proximate aim, — their virtual and secret though not their avowed or constantly conscious inspiration, — an inspiration which has to be often summoned to their aid in hours of depression and disheartenment when the willing spirit is on the point of succumbing to the weak and weary flesh. It is so with the statesman, with the philosopher, with the astronomer, with the inventors and discoverers in science ; with the poet, if he comprehends the grandeur of his calling, as Milton did ; Avith the musician, if his strains, like those of Handel and Mozart, are such as purify and elevate the soul. The patient and skilful surgeon is not the less a mitigator of human suffer- ing because he takes his fees, and is wrapped up in his profession, rather than perpetually reminding himself of its beneficence. The writer, whether of philosophy or fiction, who " vindicates the ways of God to men," who renders virtue attractive and great thoughts familiar, is not the less a doer of good because he desires fame ar- dently and loves it profoundly when it comes. The emi- nent lawyer, who deals out righteous decisions and widely influential judgments, has not the weaker claim upon our 352 LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. gratitude because his heart has seldom consciously glowed M'ith the love of his fellow-men ; because he thinks more of doing his work well and justly than of tlie bless- ings which tliat true work may ultimately spread abroad. The artist, even, who is absorbed in his art, — who so worships it that he would deem it almost an insult to re- gard it as a means and not an end, — if only liis concep- tions of its scope are pure and noble, may be one of God's choicest instruments and fellow-workers in the onward march of humanity ; ay, even though his art be its own "exceeding great reward," and though his soul never soars beyond its boundaries. And for the mere privates in the ranks of the va^t army of the faithful, the humbler day-laborers in tlie wide field of toil, whose efforts and contributions are just as indispensable to the grand issue as those of their cap- tains and their guides, — if they are but true to the re- quirements of their calling, and, " whatever their hand findeth to do, do it with all their might," — who shall dispute their title to share alike in the prize-money and the fame, though they never dreamed of putting in a claim for either ? In virtue of the ever-fixed decree of the Most High, every man who does his work and his duty MUST be also doing good ; and, lastly, " They also serve who only stand and wait." It is not ours to measure relative merit or award the palm of virtue. Of one thing only we may be sure, that for ALL true lovers and servers of Humanity (what- ever may have been their line) there is reserved — not fame, not glorv', not perhaps even recognition liere, not a niche in the grand Valhalla of the Xorthern Gods, not a bower in the chill and pallid moonlight of a Greek Ely- sium, but — a welcome and a home in that beautiful and tranquil world which is the goal of all onr earthly aspi- rations, — the world of solved j^fohlems, of realized ideals, of yearning affections quenched in the fulness of fruition, — that world where the Spirit shall be always willing, and the Flesh never weak. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara College Library Santa Barbara, California Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. FB'191968 F^ £aijii 8REr'0FEB2 B \E] li RCJUN 1 2 1973 120015Q iNTERLIBRiU^Y LOAN jyigjfglRSITY oi^ CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA, CA 93106 3 1205 02336 3466 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 062 742 K;«3Wi»iWiawP5jJW»»8i5S».-' . '<«ii«(V«MnR