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COMPANIONS
OF
MY SOLITUDE.
By ARTHUR HELPS,
ADTHOR OF " FRIENDS IN COUNCIL," '* REALMAH,''
"CASIMIR MAREMMA."
From the Seventh London Edition.
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1878.
^rcajs of
JOHN WILSON AND SON,
Cambridge.
COMPANIONS
OF MY
DE.
■\T THEN in the country, I live much alone ; and,
' ' as I wander over downs and commons and
through lanes with lofty hedges, many thoughts
come into my mind. I find, too, that the same ones
come again and again, and are spiritual companions.
At times they insist upon being with me, and are
resolutely intrusive. I think I will describe them,
that so I may have more mastery over them.
Instead of suffering them to haunt me as vague faces
and half-fashioned resemblances, I will make them
into distinct pictures, which I can give away, or
hang up in my room, turning them, if I please,
with their faces to the wall ; and in short be free to
do what I like with them.
6 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
Ellesmere will then be able to deride them at his
pleasure ; and so they will go through the alembic of
sarcasm ; Dunsford will have something more to
approve, or rebuke ; Lucy something more to love, or
to hate. Even my dogs and my trees will be the
better for this work, as, when it is done, they will,
perhaps, have a more disengaged attention from me.
Faithful, steadfast creatures, both dogs and trees ; how
easy and charming is your converse with me com-
pared with the eager, exclusive, anxious way in
which the creations of my own brain, who at least
should have some filial love and respect for me, insist
upon my attention !
It was a thoroughly English day to-day, sombre
and quiet, the sky coming close to the earth, and
every thing seeming to be of one color. I wandered
over the downs, not heeding much which way I
went, and driven by one set of thoughts which of
late have had great hold upon me.
I think often of the hopes of the race here, of
what is to become of our western civilization, and
what can be made of it. Others may pursue science
or art, and I long to do so too ; but I cannot help
thinking of the state and fortunes of large masses of
mankind, and hoping that thought may do some-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. *J
thing for them. After all riiy cogitations, my mind
generally returns to one thing, the education of the
people. For want of general cultivation how greatly
individual excellence is crippled. Of what avail,
for example, is it for any one of us to have sur-
mounted any social terror, or any superstition, while
his neighbors lie sunk in it.? His conduct in refer-
ence to them becomes a constant care and burden.
Meditating upon general improvement, I often
think a great deal about the climate in these parts
of the world ; and I see that without much husbandry
of our means and resources, it is difficult for us to
be any thing but low barbarians. The difficulty of
living at all in a cold, damp, desti-uctive climate is
great. Socrates went about with very scanty cloth-
ing, and men praise his wisdom in caring so little
for the goods of this life. He ate sparingly, and of
mean food. That is not the way, I suspect, that we
can make a philosopher here. There are people
who would deride one for saying this, and would
contend that it gives too much weiglit to worldly
things. But I suspect they are misled by notions
borrowed from Eastern climates. Here we must
make prudence one of the substantial virtues.
One thing, though, I see, and that is, that there is
a quantity of misplaced labor, of labor which is not
8 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
consumed in stern contest with the rugged world
around us, in the endeavor to compel Nature to give
us our birthright, but in fighting with " strong delu-
sions " of all kinds ; or rather in putting up obstacles
which we laboriously knock down again, in making
Chinese mazes between us and objects we have
daily need of, and where we should have only the
shortest possible line to go. As I have said else-
where, half the labor of the world is pure loss, — the
work of Sisyphus rolling up stones to come down
again inevitably.
Law, for example, what a loss is there ; of time,
of heart, of love, of leisure ? There are good men
whose minds are set upon improving the law ; but
I doubt whether any of them are prepared to go far
enough. Here, again, we must hope most from gen-
eral improvement of the people. Perhaps, though,
some one great genius will do something for us. I
have often fancied that a man might play the part of
Brutus in the law. He might simulate madness in
order to ensure freedom. He might make himself
a great lawyer, rise to eminence in the profession,
and then turn round and say, " I am not going to
enjoy this high seat and dignity ; but intend hence-
forward to be an advocate for the people of this
country against the myriad oppressions and vexa-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
9
tions of the law. No Chancellorships or Chief-Jus-
ticeships for me. I have only pretended to be this
slave in order that you should not say that I am an
untried and unpractical man, — that I do not under-
stand your mysteries."
This, of course, is not the dramatic way in which
such a thing would be done. But there is greatness
enough in the world for it to be done. If no lawyer
rises up to fill the place which my imagination has
assigned for him, we must hope that statesmen will
do something for us in this matter, that they will
eventually protect us (though, hitherto, they never
have done so) from lawyers.
There are many things done now in the law at
great expense by private individuals which ought
to be done for all by officers of the State. It is as
if each individual had to make a road for himself
whenever he went out, instead of using the king's
highway.
Many of the worst things in the profession take
place low down in it. I am not sure that I would
not try the plan of having public notaries with very
extensive functions, subjecting them to official con-
trol. What exclamations about freedom we should
hear, I dare say, if any large measure of this kind
were proposed ; which exclamations and their con-
10 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
sequences have long been, in my mind, a chief ob-
stacle to our possessing the reality of freedom.
What difference is it whether I am a slave to my
lawyer, or subject indirectly to more official control
in the changing of my property? I do not know a
meaner and sadder portion of a man's existence, or
one more likely to be full of impatient sorrow, than
that which he spends in waiting at the offices of
lawyers.
It is to be obsei-ved that all satire falls short when
aimed against the practices in the Law. No man
can imagine, not Swift himself, things more shame-
ful, absurd, and grotesque than the things which
do take place daily in the Law. Satire becomes
merely narrative. A modern novelist depicts a man
ruined by a legacy of a thousand pounds, and sleep-
ing under a four-legged table because it reminded
him of the days when he used to sleep in a four-post
bed. This last touch about the bed is humorous,
but the substance of the story is dry narrative
only.
These evils are not of yesterday, or of this country
only ; I observe that the first Spanish colonists in
America write home to the Government begging
them not to allow lawyers to come to the colony.
At the same time, we must not forget how many
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. II
of the evils attributed solely to the proceedings of
lawyers result from the want of knowledge of busi-
ness in the world in general, and its inaptness for
business, the anxiety to arrange more and for longer
time than is wise or possible, and the occasional
trusting of affairs to women, who in our country are
brought up to be utterly incompetent to the manage-
ment of affairs. Still, with all these allowances, and
taking care to admit, as we must, if we have any
fairness, that notwithstanding the element of chican-
ery and perverse small-mindedness in which they
are involved, there are many admirable and very
high-minded men to be found in all grades of the
law (perhaps a more curious instance of the power
of the human being to maintain its structure unim-
paired in the midst of a hostile element, than that a
man should be able to abide in a heated oven) —
admitting all these extenuating circumstances, we
must nevertheless declare, as I set out by saying, that
Law affords a notable example of loss of time, of
heart, of love, of leisure.*
♦ Many of the adjuncts and circumstances of the Law are
calculated to maintain it as a mystery : I allude to the un-
couth form and size of deeds, the antiquated words, the
unusual kind of handwriting. Physicians' prescriptions
may have a better effect for being expressed mysteriously,
but legal matters cannot surely be made too clear, even in
the merest minutiee.
12 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
\
Well, then, as another instance of misplaced labor,
I suppose we must take a good deal of what goes on
in schools and colleges, and, indeed, in parliaments
and other assemblages of men, not to speak of the
wider waste of means and labor which prevails in
all physical works, — such as buildings, furniture,
decorations ; and not merely waste but obstruction,
so that if there were a good angel attendant on the
human race, with power to act on earth, it would
destroy as fast as made a considerable portion of
men's productions, as the kindest thing which could
be done for man and the best instruction for him.
The truth is, we must considerably address our-
selves to cope with Nature. Here again, too, we
come to the want of more extended and general cul-
tivation, for otherwise we cannot fully enjoy or profit
by scientific discovery. At present a man in a civil-
ized country is surrounded by things which are
greater than he is ; he does not understand them,
cannot regulate them, cannot mend them.
This ignorance proceeds in some respects from
division of labor. A man knows how to make a
pin's head admirably, but is afraid to handle or give
an opinion upon things which he has not daily knowl-
edge of. This applies not only to physical things,
but to law, church, state, and the arts and sciences
generally.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 13
After all, the advancement of the world .depends
upon the use of small balances of advantage over
disadvantage ; for there is compensation everywhere
and in every thing. No one discovery resuscitates
the world ; certainly no physical one. Each new
good thought, or word, or deed, brings its shadow
with it ; and, as I have just said, it is upon the small
balances of gain that we get on at all. Often, too,
this occurs indirectly, as when moral gains give
physical gains, and these ag'ain give room for further
moral and intellectual culture.
Frequently it 'seems as if the faculties of man
were not quite adequate as yet to his situation.
This is perhaps more to be seen in contemplating
individuals, than in looking at mankind in general.
The individual seems the sport of circumstance.
When Napoleon invaded Russia (the proximate
cause of his downfall), though doubtless there were
very adverse and unfortunate circumstances attend-
ant upon that invasion, yet, upon the. whole, it gave
a good opportunity for working out the errors of
the man's mind and system. The circumstances
were not unfair, as we may say, against him. Most
prosperous men, perhaps I should say most men,
have in the course of their lives their campaign in
Russia, — when they strain their fortune to the utter-
14 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
most, and often it breaks under them. I did not
mean any thing like this when I said that the indi-
vidual seems the sport of circumstance. Neither
did I mean that small continuous faults and mis-
doings have considerable effect upon a man, such as
the errors and vices of youth, which are silently put
down to a man from day to day, like his reckoning
at an inn. But I alluded to those very unfortunate
concurrences of circumstances, which most men's
lives will tell them of, where a man, from some
small error or omission, from some light carelessness,
or over-trust, in thoughtless innocence or inexperi-
ence, gets entangled in a 'web of adverse circum-
stances, which will be company for him on sleepless
nights and anxious days throughout a large part of
his life. Were success in life (morally or physically)
the main object here, it certainly would seem as if
a little more faculty in man were sadly needed. A
similar thing occurs often to the body, when a man,
from some small mischance or oversight, lays the
beginning of a disease which shall depress and
enfeeble him while he sojourns upon earth. And it
seems, when he looks back, as if such a little thing
would have saved him ; if he had not crossed over
the road, if he had not gone to see his friend on
that particular day, if the dust had not been so
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 1 5
unpleasant on that occasion, the whole course of his
life would have been different. Living, as we do,
in the midst of stern gigantic laws, which crush
every thing down that comes in their way, which
know no excuses, admit of no small errors, never
send a man back to learn his lesson and try him
again, but are as inexorable as Fate, — living, I say,
with such powers above us (unseen, too, for the
most part), it does seem as if the faculties of man
were hardly .as yet adequate to his situation here.
Such considerations as the above tend to charity
and humility; and they point also to the existence
of a future state.
As regards charity, for example, a man might
extend to others the ineffable tenderness which he
has for some of his own sins and errors, because he
knows the whole history of them ; and though,
taken at a particular point, they appear very large
and very black, he knew them In their early days
when they were play-fellows instead of tyrant
demons. There are others which he cannot so well
smooth over, because he knows that in their case
inward proclivity coincided with outwaid tempta-
tion ; and, if he is a just man, he is well aware that
if he had not erred here he would have erred there ;
6 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
that experience, even at famine price, was necessary
for him in those matters. But, in considering the
misdoings and misfortunes of others, he may as well
begin, at least, by thinking that they are of the class
which he has found from his own experience to
contain a larger amount of what we call ill-fortune
than of any thing like evil disposition. For time
and chance, says the Preacher, happen to all men.
Thus I thought in my walk this dull and dreary
afternoon, till the rising of the moon and the return
from school of the children with their satchels com-
ing over the down warned me, too, that it was time
to return home ; and so, trying not to think any
more of these things, I looked at the bare beech-
trees, still beautiful, and the dull sheep-ponds scat-
tered here and there, and thought that the country
even in winter and in these northern regions, like a
great man in adversity and just disgrace, was still
to be looked at with hopeful tenderness, even if, in
the man's case, there must also be somewhat of
respectful condemnation. As I neared home I com-
forted myself, too, by thinking that the inhabitants
of sunnier climes do not know how winning and
joyful is the look of the chimney-tops of our homes
in the midst of what to them would seem most des-
olate and dreary.
CHAPTER II.
T SUPPOSE it has happened to most men who
observe their thoughts at all, to notice how some
expression returns again and again in the course of
their meditations, or, indeed, of their business, form-
ing as it were a refrain to all they think, or do, for
any given day. Sometimes, too, this refrain has no
particular concern with the thought or business of
the day ; but seems as if it belonged to some under-
current of thought and feeling. This, at least, is
what I experienced to-day myself, being haunted by
a bit of old Spanish poetry, which obtruded itself,
sometimes inopportunely, sometimes not so, in the
midst of all my work or play. The words were
these : —
" Quan presto se va el placer.
Como despues de acordado
Da dolor;
Como, al nuestro parecer,
Qualquiera tiempo pasado
Fu^ mejor."
2
l8 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITtlDE.
How quickly passes pleasure away.
How after being granted
It gives pain ;
How in our opinion
Any past time
Was better (than that we passed in pleasure).
It was not that I agreed with the sentiment, ex-
cept as applied to vicious pleasure, being rather of
Sydney Smith's mind, that the remembrance of past
pleasure is present pleasure ; but I suppose the
words chimed in with reflections on the past which
formed the under-current of my thoughts, as I went
through the wood of beeches which bounded my
walk to-day.
A critique had just been sent me of some literary
production, in which the reviewer was very gracious
in noticing the calmness and moderation of the
author. "Ah, my friend," thought I to myself,
" how differently you would write if you did but
know the man as I do, and were aware what a
nerce fellow he is with all his outward smoothness,
lardly ruling at times thoughts which are any thing
but calm and moderate, yet struggling to be just,
and knowing that violence is always lost ! "
From that I went on to consider how intense is
the loneliness for the most part of any man who
endeavors to think, — like the Nile wandering on
COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE. 19
through a desert country, with no tributary streams
to cheer and aid it, and to be lost in sympathy with
its main current. In politics, for example, such a
man will have too affectionate a regard for the
people to be a democrat ; he would as soon leave
his own ' children without guidance ; and, on the
other hand, he will have too great a regard for
merit and fitness to be an aristocrat. He will find
no one plank to walk up and down consistently ;
and will be always looking beyond measures which
satisfy other men ; and seeing, perhaps, that as
regards politics themselves, greater things are to be
done out of them than in them.
I was silent in thought for a moment, and then
my refrain (^ame back again —
"Qualquiera tiempo pasado
Fu^ mejor."
And in a moment I went back, not to the pleasures,
but to the ambitious hopes and projects of youth.
And when a man does reflect upon the ambitions
which are as characteristic of that period of life as
reckless courage or elastic step, and finds that at
each stage of his journey since, some hope has
dropped off as too burdensome, or too romantic, till
at last it is enough for him only to carry himself
at all upright in this troublesome world, — what
20 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
thoughts come back upon him ! How he meditates
upon his own errors and shortcomings, and sees
that he has had not only the hardness, oiliness,
and imperturbability of the world to contend with,
but that he himself has generally been his worst
antagonist.
In this mood, I might have thrown myself upon
the mound under a green beech-tree that was near,
the king of the woods, and uttered many lamenta-
tions ; but instead of doing any thing of the kind, I
walked sedately by it ; for, as we go on in life, we
find we cannot afford excitement, and we learn to
be parsimonious in our emotions. Again I mut-
tered,
" Qualquiera tiempo pasado
¥ni mejor."
And I threw forward these words into the future,
as if I were already blaming any tendency to un-
necessary emotion.
I entered now into another vein of thought, con-
sidering that kind Nature would not allow a man
to be so very wise, nor for the sak6 of any good he
might do to others, permit him to forfeit the benefit
he must derive from his own errors, failures, and
shortcomings. You may mean well, she says, and
you might expect that I should give you any ex-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 21
traordinary furtherance, and not suffer you to be
plagued with drawbacks and errors of your own,
that so you might do your work undisturbed : but
I love you too well for that. I sacrifice no one child
for the benefit of the rest. You all must learn
humility.
I felt the truth of these words, and thereupon
gave myself up to more cheerful thoughts. How
much cheerfulness there is, by the way, in humility !
I listened to the cuckoo in the woods, hearing his
tiresome but welcome noise for the first time in the
year, and I looked out for the wild flowers that were
just beginning to show themselves, and thought
that, from the names of flowers, it is evident that,
in former days, poets and scholars must have lived
in the country and looked well at Nature. Else
how came all these picturesque and poetical names,
"Love in' idleness," "Venus's looking-glass," and
such like ?
But as the shades of evening came on in the
wood, my thoughts went away from these simple
topics ; the refrain, too,
" Quan presto se va el placer,'*
sounded in my ears again ; and I passed on to
meditations of like color to those in the former part
22 COMPAIVJONS OF M7 SOLITUDE.
of my walk. In addition to the other hindrances I
alluded to before, this also must come home to the
mind of many a man of the present generation :
how he is to discern, much more to teach, even in
small things, without having clear views, or distinct
convictions, upon some of the greatest matters, —
upon religious questions for instance? And yet I
suppose it must be tried. Even a man of Goethe's
immense industry and great intellectual resources,
feared to throw himself upon the sea of biblical
criticism. But, at the same time, how poor, timid,
and tentative must be all discourse built upon in-
ferior motives ! Ah, if we could but discern what
is the right way and the highest way !
These doubts which beset men upon many of the
greatest matters, are the direct result of the lies and
falsification of our predecessors. Sometimes when
we look at the frightful errors which metaphorical
expressions may have introduced, I do not wonder
that Plato spoke in the hardest manner of Poets.
But man cannot narrate without metaphors, so
much more does he see in every transaction than
the. bare circumstances.
When I was at Milan and saw the glory of that
town, the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci, I
could not help thinking, as my way is, many things
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 23
not, perhaps, very closely connected with that grand
work, but which it suggested to my mind. At
first you may be disappointed in finding the figures
so much faded, but soon, with patient looking,
much comes into view ; and after marvelling at the
inexpressible beauty which still remains, you find
to your astonishment that no picture, no print, per-
haps no description, has adequately represented
what you can still trace in this work. Not only
has it not been represented, but it has been utterly
misrepresented. The copyist thought he could tell
the story better than the painter, and where the
outlines are dim, was not content to leave them so,
but must insert something of his own which is
clearly wrong. This, I thought, is the way of most
translation, and I might add, of most portrait paint-
ing and nearly all criticism. And it occurred to
me that the written history of the world was very
like the prints of this fresco ; namely, a clear ac-
count, a good deal of it utterly wrong, of what at
first hand is considerably obliterated, and which,
except in minds of the highest powers of imagina-
tion, to be a clear conception can hardly be a just
one.
And then, carrying my application still further to
tlie most important of all histories, I thought hov>'
24 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
the simple majesty of the original transaction had
probably suffered a like misconception, from the
fading of the material narrative, and still more from,
the weak inventions of those who could not repre-
sent accurately, and were impatient of any dimness
(to their eyes) in the divine original.
I often fancy how I should like to direct the in-
tellectual efforts of men ; and if I had the power,
how frequently I should direct them to those great
subjects in metaphysics and theology which now
men shun.
What patient labor and what intellectual power
are often bestowed in coming to a decision on any
cause which involves much worldly property.
Might there not be some great hearing of any of
the intellectual and spiritual difficulties which beset
the paths of all thoughtful men in the present age ?
Church questions, for example, seem to require
a vast investigation. As it is, a book or pamphlet
is put forward on one side, then another on the
other side, and somehow the opposing facts and
arguments seldom come into each other's presence.
And thus truth sustains great loss.
My own opinion is, if I can venture to say that I
have an opinion, that what we ought to seek for is
a church of the utmost width of doctrine, and with
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 25
the most beautiful expression that can be devised
for that doctrine, — the most beautiful expression, I
mean, in words, in deeds, in sculpture, and in
sacred song ; which should have a simple, easy
grandeur in its proceedings that should please the
elevated and poetical mind, charm the poor, and
yet not lie open to just cavilling on the part of those
somewhat hard, intellectual worshippers who must
have a reason for every thing ; which should have
vitality and growth in it ; and which should attract
and not repel those who love truth better than any
creature.
Pondering tliese things in the silence of the downs,
I at last neared home ; and found that the result of
all my thoughts was that any would-be teacher must
be contented and humble, or try to be so, in his ef-
forts of any kind ; and that if the great questions can
hardly be determined by man (divided too as he is
from his brother in all ways) he must still try and
do what he can on lower levels, hoping ever for more
insight, and looking forward to the knowledge which
may be gained by death.
CHAPTER III.
'nr^O-DAY, as the weather was cold and boister-
ous, I could only walk under shelter of the yew
hedge in my garden, which some gracious predeces-
sor (all honor to him !) planted to keep off the dire
north-west winds, and which, I fear, unless he was
a very hardy plant himself, he did not live long
enough to profit much by. Being so near home, my
thoughts naturally took a domestic turn ; and I vexed
myself by thinking that I had received no letter from
my little boy. This was owing to the new post-office
regulations, which did not allow letters to go out from
country places, or be delivered at such places, on
a Sunday. Oh those Borgias, said I to myself, how
much we have to blame them for ! To be sure, I
know pretty well what the letter would be.
" I hope you are well papa and I send you my love
and I have got a kite and Uncle George's dog is very
fierce. His name is Nero which was a Roman em-
peror nearly quite white only he has got two black
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 2*J
spots just over his nose And I send my love to mam-
ma and the children and I am your own little boy
and, affectionate son,
"Leonard Milverton."
Not a very important, certainly not a very artistic,
production this letter, but still it has its interest for
the foolish paternal mind, and I should like to have
received it to-day. It is greatly ow^ing to those
Borgias that I have not received this letter. Most
of my neighbors imagine that their little petitions
were the cause of these post-office regulations ; but
I beg to go somewhat further back, and I come to
Pope Alexander the Sixth, and lay a great deal of
blame on him. The pendulous folly of mankind
oscillates as far in this direction as it has come from
that ; and an absurd Puritan is only a correlative to
a wicked Pope.
From such reflections, I fell to considering Puri-
tanism generally, and I am afraid I came to a differ-
ent conclusion from that which would have been
popular at any of the late public meetings ; but then
I console myself by an aphorism of Ellesmere's, who
is wont to remark, " How exactly proportioned to a
man's ignorance of the subject is the noise he makes
about it at a public meeting." Knowledge brings
28 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
doubts and exceptions and limitations which, though
occasionally some aids to truth, are all hindrances
to vigorous statement.
But to go back to what I thought about Puritan-
ism ; for I endeavored to methodize my thoughts,
and the following is the course they took.
What are the objects of life, as far as regards this
world } Its first wants, I answer, namely, food and
raiment. What besides ? Marrying and the rearing
of children ; and, in general, the cultivation of the
affections. So far Puritans would agree with us.
But suppose all these things to be tempered with
gayety and festivity : what element of wickedness has
necessarily entered ? None that I can perceive. Self-
indulgence takes many forms ; and we should bear
in mind that there may be a sullen sensuality as well
as a gay one.
But the truth is, there is a secret belief amongst
some men that God is displeased with man's happi-
ness ; and in consequence they slink about creation,
ashamed and afraid to enjoy, any thing.
They answer, we do not object to rational pleas-
ures.
But who, my good people, shall exactly define
rational pleasures ? You are pleased with a flower ;
to cultivate flowers is what you call a rational pleas-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 29
ure : there are people, however, to whom a flower is
somewhat insipid, but they perhaps dote upon music,
which, however, is unfortunately not one of your
rational pleasures, — chiefly, as I believe, because it
is mainly a social one. Why is there any thing nec-
essarily wrong in social pleasures ? Certainly some
of the most dangerous vices, such as pride, are found
to flourish in solitude with more vigor than in society ;
and a man may be deadly avaricious who has never
even gone out to a tea-party.
Once I happened to overhear a dialogue some-
what similar to that which Charles Lamb, perhaps,
only feigned to hear. I was travelling in a railway-
carriage with a most precise looking, formal person,
the Arch-Quaker, if there be such a person. His
countenance was very noble, or had been so, before
it was frozen up. He said nothing ; I felt a great
respect for him. At last his mouth opened. I lis-
tened with attention ; I had hitherto lived with
foolish, gad-about, dinner-eating, dancing people ;
now I was going to hear the words of retired wisdom ;
when he thus addressed his young daughter sitting
opposite, " Hast thee heard how Southamptons went
lately ? " (in those days South-western Railway
shares were called Southamptons) ; and she replied
with like gravity, giving him some information that
3© COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
she had picked up about Southamptons yesterday
evening.
I leant back rather sickened as I thought what
was probably the daily talk and the daily thoughts
in that family, from which I conjectured all amuse-
ment was banished save that connected with intense
money getting.
Well, but, exclaims the advocate of Puritanism,
I do not admit that my clients, on abjuring the
pleasures of this world, fall into pride, or sullen
sensuality, or intense money getting. They only
secure to themselves more time for works of charity
and for the love of God.
You are an adroit advocate, and are careful, by
not pushing your case too far, to give me the least
possible room for reply. They secure to themselves
more time for these good works you say. Do they
do them ? But the truth is, in order to meet your
remark and to extract the good there is in it, I must
begin by saying that Puritanism, as far as it is an
abnegation of self, is good, or may be so. But this
is most surely the case, when it turns its sufferings
and privations to utility. It has always appeared
to me that there is so much to be done in this world,
that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDB^> 3I ''^ CV^
turned to good account for others, is a loss, — ^^'^^^JVl A'
if you may so express it, to the spiritual world. ^"^ ' '^''
The Puritanism which I object to is that which
avoids some pleasure, and exhausts in injurious
comment and attack upon other people any leisure
and force of mind which it may have gained by its
abstinence from the pleasure.
I can understand and "sympathize with the man
vvrho says, " I enjoy festivity, but I cannot go to the
feast I am bidden to, to-night, for there are sick
people who must be first attended to." But I do
not love the man who stays away from the feast and
employs his leisure in delivering a sour discourse on
the wickedness of the others who are invited to the
feast, and who go to it.
Moreover, this censoriousness is not only a sin,
but the inventor of many sins. Indeed the manu-
facture of. sins is so easy a manufacture, that I am
convinced man could readily be persuaded that it
was wicked to use the left leg as much as the right ;
whole congregations would only permit themselves
to hop ; and, what is more to our present point,
would consider that when they walked in the ordi-
nary fashion they were committing a deadly sin.
Now, I should not think that the man who were to
invent this sin would be a benefactor to the human
race.
32 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
You often hear in a town, or village, a bit of do-
mestic history, which seems at first to militate
against what I have been saying, but is in reality
very consistent with it. The story is of some poor
man, and is apt to run thus : He began to frequent
the ale-house ; he sought out amusements ; there
was a neighboring fair where he first showed his
quarrelsome dispositiqn ; then came worse things ;
and now here he is in prison. Yes, I should reply,
he frequented, with a stealthy shame, those places
which you, who would ignore all amusement, have
suffered to be most coarse and demoralizing. All
along he had an exaggerated notion of the blame
that he was justly liable to from his first steps in the
downward path ; the truthunfortunately is, that you
go a long way to make a small error into a sin, when
you miscall it so. I would not, therefore, have a
clergyman talk of the ale-house as if it were the pit
of Acheron. On the contrary, I would have him
acknowledge that, considering the warmth and
cheerfulness to be found in the sanded parlor of the
village inn, it is very natural that men should be apt
to frequent it. I would have him, however, go on to
show what frequenting the ale-house mostly leads
to, and how the laborer's home might be made to
rival the ale-house ; and I would have him help to
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 33
make it so, or, in some way, to provide some sub-
stitute for the ale-house.
The evils of competition are very considerable,
and many people in these times hold up competition
as the great monster evil of the age. I do not know
how that may be ; but I am sure that the competition
there is in the way of puritanical demonstration is
very injurious to sincerity. This competition is the
child of fear. A. is afraid that his neighbor B. will
not think well of him, because he (A.) does or per-
mits something which C, another neighbor, will not
allow in his house. Surely this is little else than
mere man-worship. It puts one in mind of the
story of that congregation of the Church of England,
who begged their clergyman to give them longer
sermons, — not that they were fond of long dis-
courses, — but that they might not always be out of
church before some neighboring congregation of
Wesleyans or Independents.
Returning to the imaginary advocate for Puritan-
ism who said that it secured more time for works of
charity and for the love of God.
I do not know whether other people's observation
will tally with mine ; but, as far as I have observed,
it appears to me that charity requires the sternest
labor and the most anxious thought ; that, in short,
34 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
it is one of the most difficult things in the world, and
is not altogether a matter for leisure hours. This re-
mark applies to the more serious functions of charity.
But, we must remember, that the whole of charity is
not comprised in carrying about gifts to one another,
or, to speak more generally, in remedying the mate-
rial evils suffered by those around us, else life would
indeed be a dreary affair ; but there are exquisite
little charities to be performed in reference to social
pleasures.
Then, as to the love of God, I do not venture to
say much upon so solemn a theme ; but it does oc-
cur to me that we should talk and think very humbly
about our capacity in matters so much above us. At
any rate, I do not see why the love of God should
withdraw us largely from our fellow-man. That love
we believe was greatest in Him who graced with
His presence the marriage feast at Cana in Galilee ;
who was never known to shun or ignore the exist-
ence of the vicious ; and to whom, more than to all
other teachers, the hypocrite seems to have been
particularly odious.
But there is another very important consideration
to be weighed by those who are fearful of encourag-
ing amusements, especially amongst their poorer
brethren. What are the generality of people to do, or
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 35
to think of, for a considerable portion of each day, if
they are not allowed to busy themselves with some
form of recreation ? Here is this infinite creature,
man, who looks before and after, whose swiftness of
thought is such, even among the dullest of the species,
as would perhaps astonish the brightest, who are apt
to imagine that none think but themselves ; and you
fancy that he can be quite contented with providing
warmth and food for himself and those he has to Jove
and cherish. Food and warmth ! Content with that I
Not he : and we should greatly despise him if he
could be. Why is it that in all ages small towns and
remote villages have fostered little malignities of all
kinds ? The true answer is, that people will back-
bite one another to any extent rather than not be
amused. Nay, so strong is this desire for something
to go on that may break the monotony of life, that
people, not otherwise ill-natured, are pleased with
the misfortune of their neighbors, solely because it
gives something to think of, something to talk about.
They imagine how the principal actors and sufferers
concerned in the misfortune will bear it ; what they
will do ; how they will look ; and so the dull by-
stander forms a sort of drama for himself. He would,
perhaps, be told that it is wicked for him to go to
such an entertainment : he makes one out for him-
self, not always innocently.
ofi COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
You hear clergymen in country parishes denounc-
ing the ill-nature of their parishioners : it is in vain :
the better sort of men try to act up to what they are
told, but really it is so dull in the parish that a bit of
scandal is welcome to the heart. These poor people
have nothing to think about; nature shows them
comparatively little, for art and science have not
taught them to look behind the scenes, or even at the
scenes; literature they know nothing of ; they can-
not have gossip about the men of the past (which is
the most innocent kind of gossip), in other words,
read and discuss history ; they have no delicate handi-
work to amuse them ; in short, talk they must, and
talk they will, about their neighbors, whose goings
on are a perpetual puppet-show to them.
But, to speak more gravely, man, even the most
sluggish-minded man, craves amusement of some
kind ; and his wiser and more powerful brethren
will show their wisdom, or theii want ol it, in Itie
amusements they contrive for him.
We need not be atraid that in England any art or
innocent amusement will be cultivated too much.
The genius of the people, though kindly, is severe.
And that is why there is so much less danger of their
being injured, if any one is, by recreation. Cyrus
kept the Lydians tame, we are told, by allowing them
to cultivate music ; the Greeks were perhaps pre-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 37
vented from becoming dominant by a cultivation of
many arts ; but the Anglo-Saxons, like the Romans,
can afford to cultivate art and recreations of all kinds.
Such pursuits w^ill not tame them too much. To
contend, occasionally, against the bent of the genius,
or the circumstances of a people. Is one of the great
arts of statesmanship. The same thing which is to be
dreaded in one place is to be cultivated in another ;
here a poison, there an antidote.
The above is w^hat I thought in reference to Puri-
tanism during my walk this evening : then, by a
not uneasy diversion of mind, I turned to another
branch of small persecutions, — small do I call them }
perhaps they are the greatest that are endured, cer-
tainly the most vexatious. I mean all that is per-
petuated by the tyranny of the weak.
This is a most fertile subject, and has been nearly
neglected. Weak Is a relative term : whenever two
people meet, one is comparatively weak and the
other strong ; the relation between them Is often
supposed to imply this. Taking society In general,
there is a certain weakness of the kind I mean,
attributable to the sick, the spoilt, the ill-tempered,
the unfortunate, the aged, women, and the clergy.
Now I venture to say, there is no obser\'^ant inan of
the world who has lived to the age of thirty who
has not seen numerous Instances of severe tyranny
38 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
exercised by persons belonging to one or other of
these classes; and which tyranny has been estab-
lished, continued, and endured, solely by reason of
the weakness, real or supposed, of the persons ex-
ercising it. Talking once with a thoughtful man
on this subject, he remarked to me, that, of course,
the generous suffered much from the tyranny I was
speaking of, as the strength of it was drawn from
their strength. It might be compared to an evil
government of a rich people, in which their riches
furnished forth abundant armies wherewith to op-
press the subject.
In quiet times this tyranny is very great. I have
often thought whether it was not one very consider-
able compensation for rude hard times, or times of
dire alarm, that domestic tyranny was then probably
less severe : and among the various forms of domes-
tic tyranny, none occupies a more distinguished
place than this of the tyranny of the weak over the
strong.
If you come to analyze it, it is a tyranny exercised,
by playing upon the good-nature, the fear of respon-
sibility, the dread of acting selfishly, the horror of
giving pain, prevalent among good and kind people.
They often know that it is a tremendous tyranny
they are suffering under, and they do not feel it the
less because they are consenting parties.
. COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 39
Meditating sometimes upon the results of this
tyranny, I have thought to myself, what is to stop
it? In a state of further developed Christianity,
unless, indeed, it were equally developed in all
minds, there may be only more room for this tyr-
anny. And then this strange, but perhaps just
idea came into my mind, that this tyranny would
fall away in a state of clearer knowledge such as
might accompany another state of being ; for then,
the secrets of men's hearts not being profoundly
concealed by silence, or by speech, it would be
seen what the sufferers thought of these tyrannous
proceedings ; and the tyrants would shrink back,
abashed at the enormity of their requisitions, made
visible in the clear mirror of another's mind.
A common form of this tyranny is where the ty-
rant uses a name of great potency, such as that of
some relationship, and having performed few or
none of the duties, exacts from the other side a most
oppressive tribute, — oppressive, even if the duties
had been performed.
There is one reason for putting a limit to the sub-
serviency of the strong to the weak, which reason,
if fully developed, might do more at times to pro-
tect the strong from the weak than any thing I
know. Surely the most foolish strong person must
4-0 COMPANIONS OF. MY SOLITUDE.
occasionally have glimpses that he or she cannot
sacrifice himself or herself alone : that, in dealing
with another person, you are in some measure rep-
resenting the outer world ; and ought (to use an
official phrase) to govern yourself accordingly. We
see this in managing children : and the most weakly
indulgent people find that they must make a stop
somewhere ; with some perception, it is to be hoped,
that the world will not go on dealing with the chil-
dren as they (the indulgent persons) are doing;
and, therefore, that tliey are preparing mischief and
discomfort on one side or the other for parties who
are necessarily to be brought in contact.
The soft mud carried away by the encroaching
sea cannot say, — "I, the soft mud, am to be the
only victim to this element ; and after I am gone it
will no more encroach." No, it means to devour
the whole land if it can.
Ah, thought I to myself, how important are such
considerations as those I have had to-day, if we
could but rightly direct them ; how much of the
health and wealth of the world depend upon them !
Even in those periods when " laws or kings" could
do predominant good or predominant ill, the mis-
eries of private life perhaps outweighed the rest ,
COMPANIONS OS MY SOLITUDE. 41
but now, as civilization advances, the tendency is
to some little amelioration of great political dan-
gers ; while, at the same time, from more refine-
ment, more intricacy of affairs, more nervous devel-
opment, more pretence of goodness, more resolve
to have every thing quite neat and smooth and
safe, the miseries which the generality of men make
for themselves do not tend to decrease, vmless kept
down by a continual growth of wise and good
thoughts and just habits of mind.
When we talk of
*' The ills that laws or kings can cause or cure,'*
our thoughts refer only to the functions of direct and
open government ; but the laws which regulate the
intercourse of society, public opinion, and, in short,
that almost impalpable code of thought and action
which grows up in a very easy fashion between man
and man, and is clothed with none of the ordinary
dress of power, may yet be the subtlest and often
the sternest despotism.
It is a strange fancy of mine, but I cannot help
wishing we could " moVe for returns," as their phrase
is in Parliament, of the suffering caused in any one
day, or other period of time, throughout the world,
to be arranged under certain heads ; and we should
then see what the world has occasion to fear most.
42 COMPANIONS Of: MY SOLITUDE.
What a large amount would come under the heads
of unreasonable fear of others, of miserable quarrels
amongst relations upon infinitesimally small sub-
jects, of imaginary slights, of undue cares, of false
shames, of absolute misunderstandings, of unneces-
sary pains to maintain credit or reputation, of vex-
ation that we cannot make others of the same mind
witli ourselves ! What a wonderful thing it would
be to see set down in figures, as it were, how ingen-
ious we are in plaguing one another ! My own pri-
vate opinion is, that the discomfort caused by
injudicious dress, worn entirely in deference, as it
has before been remarked, to the most foolish of
mankind, in fact to the tyrannous majority, would
outweigh many an evil that sounds very big.
Tested by these perfect returns, which I imagine
might be made by the angelic world, if they regard
human affairs, perhaps our every-day shaving, severe
shirt collars, and other ridiculous garments, are
equivalent to a great European war once in seven
years ; and we should find that women's stays did
about as much harm, i. e., caused as much suffering,
as an occasional pestilence, — say, for instance, the
cholera. We should find perhaps that the vexations
arising from the income-tax were nearly equal to
those caused amongst the same class of sufferers by
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 43
the ill-natured things men fancy have been said be-
hind their backs ; and perhaps the whole burden
and vexation resulting from the aggregate of the
respective national debts of that unthrifty family,
the European race, — the w^hole burden and vexa-
tion, I say, do not come up to the aggregate of
annoyances inflicted in each locality by the one ill-
natured person w^ho generally infests each little
village, parish, house, or community.
There is no know^ing what strange comparisons
and discoveries I should in my fancy have been led
to, — perhaps that the love, said to be inherent in
the softer sex, of having the last word, causes as
much mischief as all the tornadoes of the Tropics ;
or that the vexation inflicted by servants on their
masters by assuring them that such and such duties
do not belong to their place, is equivalent to all the
sufferings that have been caused by mad dogs since
the world began. But my meditations were sud-
denly interrupted and put to flight by a noise, which,
in describing afterwards in somewhat high-flown
terms, I said caused a dismay like that which would
have been felt if, neglectful of the proper periods in
history, the Huns, the Vandals, and the Visigoths,
in fact the unruly population of the world, had
combined together and rushed down upon some
quiet, orderly cathedral town.
44 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
In short, the children of my neighbors returning
from school had dashed into my field, their main
desire being to behold an arranged heap of stones
and brick-bats, which, after being diligently informed
of the fact several times by my son Leonard, I had
learnt was a house he had lately built.
There is a sort of freemasonry among children ;
for these knew at once that this heap of stones was
a house, and danced round it with delight as a great
work of art. Now, do you suppose, to come back to
the original subject of my meditations to-day, that
the grown-up child does not want amusement, when
you see how greedy children are of it? Do not
imagine we grow out of that ; we disguise ourselves
by various solemnities ; but we have none of us lost
the child-nature yet.
I was glad to see how merry the children could
be, 'though looking so blue and cold, and still more
pleased to find that my presence did not scare them
away, and that they have no grown-up feeling as
yet about ti'espassing : I fled, however, from the
noise into more quiet quarters, and broke up the
train of reflections of which I now give these out-
lines, hoping they may be of use to some one.
CHAPTER IV.
iy yrUCH retrospect is not a very safe or a very
wise thing : still there are times when a man
may do well to look back upon his past life, and
endeavor to take a comprehensive view of it. And
whether such retrospect is wise or not, it cannot be
avoided, as our reveries must sometimes turn upon
that one life, our own, respecting which we have a
great number of facts very interesting to us, and
thoroughly within our ken. The process is curiously
different from that pursued by Alnaschar in the
Arabian Nights^ who with an imaginary spurn,
alas, too well interpreted by a real gesture, disposed
at once of all his splendid fortunes gained in reverie.
In this progress of retrospection many find that the
spurn is real as well as the fatal gesture which real-
ized it, only both have been administered by the rude
world instead of by themselves ; the fragments of
their broken pottery lie around them ; and, going
back to fond memories of the past, they have to
reconstruct the original reverie, — the dream of their
youth — the proud purpose of their manhood — how
fulfilled !
46 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
Walking up and down amidst the young fir-trees
in the little plantation to the north-east of the garden,
and, occasionally, with all the interest of a young
planter, stopping in front of a particular tree, and
inspecting this year's growth, I got into such a train
of retrospect as I have just spoken of; and from
that, by a process which will be visible to the
reader, was soon led into thoughts about the future.
I pictured to myself a descendant of mine, a man
of dilapidated fortune, but still owning this house
and garden. The few adjoining fields he will long
ago have parted with. But he loves the place, hav-
ing been brought up here by his sad, gentle mother,
and having lived here with his young sister, then a
rapturous imaginative girl, his companion and
delight. Through the small ness of their fortune,
and consequently the narrow circle of their acquaint-
ances, she will have married a man totally unfit for
her ; the romance of her nature has turned some-
what sour ; and, though occasionally high-minded,
she is very peevish now, and is no longer the com-
panion that she was to her brother. He just remem-
bers his father pacing with disturbed step under
these trees which I am now walking about. He
recollects before his father's death, how eagerly the
fond wife used to waylay and open large packets,
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 47
which she would not always bring to the dying
man's bed. He now knows them to have been law
papers ; and when he thinks of these things, he
utters harsh words about the iniquity of the law in
England ; and says something about law growing
in upon a fallen estate like fungus upon old and
failing wood.
These things are now long past : they occurred in
his childhood. His mother is dead, and lies in that
quiet churchyard in the wood, where, if I mistake
not, one of his ancestors will also have found a
peaceful resting-placfe. The house has fully par-
taken of the falling fortunes of its successive owners.
The furniture is too old and worn for any new
comer to be tempted to occupy the house ; and the
little garden is let to a market-gardener. Strawber-
ries will grow then on the turf where I am now
walking, and which John, after mowing it twice in
the week, and having spent all his time in its vicin-
ity, from working-day morning till working-day
night, comes to look at on a Sunday, and, with his
hands in his pockets and himself arrayed in a waist-
coat too bright almost to behold, surveys intently,
as if it were one of the greatest products of human
invention. And John need not be ashamed of this
single-minded delight in his work, for, though it is
48 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
nothing remarkable in England, the whole conti-
nent of Europe does not probably afford such a
well-shaven bit of grass ; and, as for our love of
gardens, it is the last refuge of art in the minds and
souls of many Englishmen ; if we did not care for
gardens, I hardly know what in the way of beauty
we should care for. Well,- this has all ceased by
that time to be pleasure-garden, and I fear to think
of 'the profane cabbages which will then occupy
this trim velvety little spot. I hope that poor John,
from some distant place, will not behold the pro-
fanation.
I have lingered on these details ; but I must now
bring my distant descendant nearer to us. He will
live in some large town, getting his bread in a
humble way, and will sometimes steal down here,
pretending to want to know whether anybody has
applied to take the tumble-down place. This is
what he says to his wife (for, of course, being so
poor, this foolish Milverton has married), but she
understands him better than to be deceived by that.
He has just made one of these excursions, having,
for economy's sake and a wish to avoid the neigh-
bors, got out at a station ten miles off (our cathedral
town), and walked over to his house. It is evening,
and he has just arrived. Tired as he is, he takes a
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 49
turn round the garden, and after a long-drawn sigh,
which I know well the words for, he enters the
house. The market-gardener lives in it, and his
wife takes care of the master's rooms. She has
lighted a fire : the smoke hardly ascends, but still
there is warmth enough to call out rnuch of the
latent dampness of the apartment. The things about
him are somewhat cheerless certainly, but he would
not wish them to be otherwise. They would be
very inharmonious if they were. During his meagre
supper he is entertained with an account of the
repairs that must be looked to. The water comes
in here, and part of the wall has fallen down there ;
and farmer Smith says (the coarse woman need not
have repeated the very words) that if Mr. Milverton
is too poor to mend his own fence, he, farmer
Smith, must do it himself. Patiently the poor man
appears to attend to all this, but is thinking all the
while of his pale mother, and of his wondering, as
a child, why she never used to look up when horse
or man went by, as she sat working at that bay
window, and getting his clothes ready for school.
At last the market-gardener's wife, little attended
to, bounces out of the room ; and her abrupt departure
rouses my distant descendant to think of ways and
means. And here I cannot help, as if I were present
50 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
at the reverie, breaking in and saying, "Do not cut
down that yew-tree in the back garden, the stately
well-grown one which was an ancient tree in my
time." But no, upon second thoughts, I will say
nothing of the kind. *' Cut it down, cut them all
down, dear distant descendant, rather than let little
tradesmen want their money, or do the least dis-
honorable thing."
Apparently the present question of ways and means
is settled somehow, for he rises and paces about the
room. In a corner there lies an aged Parliamentary
report, a remnant from my old library, the bulk of
which has long been sold. It is the report of a Select
Committee upon the effect on prices of the influx of
Californian gold. There are some side-notes which
he takes to have been mine ; and this makes him
think of me — not very kindly. These are his
thoughts : This ancestor of mine, I see he busied
himself about many worldly things ; it is not likely
that, taking an interest in such affairs, he would not
have cared to have some hand in managing them ;
I conjecture that indeed, if only from one saying of
his, that the bustle of life, if good for little else, at
least keeps some sadness down at the bottom of the
heart ; and yet I do not find that our estate prospered
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 51
much under him. He might now, if he had been a
prosperous gentleman, have bought some part of
Woodcot chase (which was sold in his time and is
now all building-ground), and I should not have
been in this cursed plight.
" Distant descendant, do not let misfortune make
you, as it so often does make men, ungenerous."
He feels this and resumes. I wonder why he did
not become rich and great. I suspect he was very
laborious. (" You do me full justice there.") I sup-
pose he was very versatile, and did not keep to one
thing at a time. ('*• You do me injustice there ; for I
was always aware how much men must limit their
efforts to effect any thing.") In his books he some-
times makes shrewd worldly remarks which show he
understood something of the world, and he ought to
have mastered it.
" Now, my dear young relative, allow me to say
that last remark of yours upon character is -a very
weak one. Admitting, for the sake of argument,
that what you urge in my favor be true, you must
know that the people who write shrewdly are often
the most easy to impose upon, or have been so. I
almost suspect, without, however, having looked
into the matter, that Rochefoucauld was a tender
lover, a warm friend, and, in general, a dupe (hap-
52 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
py for him) to all the impulses and affections which
he would have us imagine he saw through and had
mastered. The simple write shrewdly : but do not
describe what they do. And the hard and worldly
would be too wise in their generation to write about
what they practise, even if they perceived it, which
they seldom do, lacking delicacy of imagination."
Perhaps (he continues) this ancestor of mine had
no ambition, and did not care about any thing but
that unwholesome scribbling (" ungracious again,
distant descendant ! ") which has brought us in but
little produce of any kind.
Dear distant kinsman, now it is my turn to speak :
now listen to me ; and I will show you the family
failing, not a very uncommon one, which has re-
duced us by degrees to this sad state ; for we, your
ancestors, look on and suffer with you.
I am afraid we must own that we were of that
foolish class of men who never can say a hearty
good word for themselves. You might put a Mil-
verton in the most favorable position in the world,
you might have made him a bishop in George the
Second's time, or a minister to a Spanish king in
the seventeenth century, and still he would have
contrived to shuffle awkwardly out of wealth and
dignities, when the right time came for self-assertion,
CO.\f PAN IONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 53
and for saying a stout word for his own cause, or
for that of his kith and kin.
*' Vox faucibus h^sit ; " the poor, simple fellow
was almost inaudible ; and, muttering something,
was supposed to say just that which he did not. I
foresaw, therefore, that unless some Milverton were
by good fortune to marry into a sturdy, pushing
flimily (which would be better for him than any
amount of present fortune) it was all over with the
race, as far as worldly prosperity is concerned. And
so it seems to be. If you feel that you are free from
this defect, I will insure you a fortune. Talk of
cutting down the yew-tree ; not a stick of the plan-
tation need be touched, and I already see deep
belts of new wood rise round newly-gained acres.
Only be sure that you really can stand up stoutly
for yourself.
I see what you are thinking of — that passage in
Bacon (and it pleases me to find that you are so far
well-read, though you have sold the books) where
he says that there are occasions when a man needs
a friend to do or say for him what he never can do
or say so well, or even at all for himself. True : but,
my simple-minded relative, have you lived to the
age of twenty-seven, and not discovered that Phoe-
nixes and Friends are creatures of the least prolific
54 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
nature? Not that, adopting your misanthropic
mood, I would say that there are no such creatures
as friends, and that they are not potent for good. A
man's friend, however, is ill, or travelling, or pow-
erless ; but good self-assurance is always within call.
You are mute : you feel then that you are guilty
too. Be comforted ; perhaps there is some island
of the blest where there will be no occasion for
pushing. Once this happened to me, that a great
fierce obdurate crowd were pushing up in long line
<^owards a door which was to lead them to some
good thing ; and I, not liking the crowd, stole out
of it, having made up my mind to be last, and was
leaning indolently against a closed-up side door:
when, all of a sudden, this door opened, and I was
the first to walk in, and saw arrive long after me
the men who had been thrusting and struggling
round me. This does not often happen in the world,
but I think there was a meaning in it.
But now no more about me. We have to ihhk.
what is to be done in your case.
You labor under a retiring disposition, you are
married, and you wish to retrieve the family for-
tunes. This is a full and frank statement of your
case, and there is no doubt that it is a very bad one,
requiring wise and energetic remedies. First, you
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 55
must at once abandon all those pursuits which de-
pend for success upon refined appreciation. You
must seek to do something which many people de-
mand. I cannot illustrate what T mean better than
by telling you what I often tell my publisher, when-
ever he speaks of the slackness of trade. There is
a confectioner's shop next door, which is thronged
with people : I beg him (the publisher) to draw a
moral from this, and to set up, himself, an eating-
house. That would be appealing to the million in
the right way. I tell him he could hire me and
others of his ''eminent hands" to cook instead of
to write, and then, instead of living on our wits
(slender diet indeed !), we ourselves should be able
to buy books, and should become great patrons of
literature. I did not tell him, because it is not wise
to run down authors in the presence of publishers,
what I may mention to you, that many of us would
be much more wisely and wholesomely employed in
cooking than in writing. But this is nothing to you.
What I want you, dear distant kinsman, to perceive,
is, that you must at once cultivate something which
is in general demand. Emigrate, if you like, and
cultivate the ground. Cattle are always in some
demand, if only for tallow. It is better to provide
the fuel for the lamp than those productions which
56 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
are said to smell most of it. I cannot enter into
details with you ; because I do not foresee what
will be the flourishing trades in your time. I can
only give you general advice.
One of the great aids, or hindrances, to success in
any thing lies in the temperament of a man. I do
not know yours ; but I venture to point out to you
what is the best temperament, namely, a combination
of the desponding and the resolute, or, as I had bet-
ter express it, of the apprehensive and the resolute.
Such is the temperament of great commanders.
Secretly, they rely upon nothing and upon nobody.
There is such a powerful element of failure in all
human affairs, that a shrewd man is always saying
to himself, what shall I do, if that which I count
upon does not come out as I expect. This foresight
dwarfs and crushes all but men of great resolution.
Then be not over-choice in looking out for what
may exactly suit you ; but rather be ready to adopt
any opportunities that occur. Fortune does not
stoop often to take any one up. Favorable oppor-
tunities will not happen precisely in the way that
you have imagined. Notliing does. Do not be dis-
couraged, therefore, by a present detriment in any
course which may lead to something good. Time
is so precious here.
COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE ^^
Get, if you can, into one or other of the main
grooves of human affairs. It is all the difference of
going by railway, and walking over a ploughed
field, whether you adopt common courses, or set up
one for yourself. You will see, if your times are
any thing like ours, very inferior persons highly
placed in the army, in the church, in office, at the
bar. They have somehow got upon the line, and
have moved on well with very little original motive
power of their own. Do not let this make you talk
as if merit were utterly neglected in these or any
professions : only that getting well into the groove
will frequently do instead of any great excellence.
My sarcastic friend, Ellesmere, whom you will
probably know by repute as a great Chief Justice, or
Lord Chancellor, says, with the utmost gravity, that
no man with less than a thousand pounds a year (I
wonder whether in your times you will think that a
large or a small income) can afford to have private
opinions upon certain important subjects. He ad-
mits that he has known it done upon eight hundred
a year ; but only by very prudent people with small
families.
But the night is coming on, and I feel, my dear
descendant, as if I should like to say something
more solemn to you than these worldly maxims.
^S COMPANIONS OF Ml' SOLITUDE.
Whatever happens, do not be dissatisfied with
your worldly fortunes, lest the speech be justly
made to you which was once made to a repining
person much given to talk of how great she and
hers had been. " Yes, madam," was the crushing
reply, " we all find our level at last."
Eternally that fable is true, of a choice being
given to men on their entrance into life. Two ma-
jestic women stand before you : one in rich vesture,
superb, with what seems like a mural crown on her
head and plenty in her hand, and something of tri-
umph, I will not say of boldness, in her eye ; and
she, the queen of this world, can give you many
things. The other is beautiful, but not alluring,
nor rich, nor powerful ; and there are traces of care
and shame and sorrow in her face ; and (marvel-
lous to say) her look is downcast and yet noble.
She can give you nothing, but she can make you
somebody. If you cannot bear to part from her
sweet, sublime countenance, which hardly veils
with sorrow its infinity, follow her : follow her, I
say, if you are really minded so to do ; but do not,
while you are on this track, look back with ill-con-
cealed envy on the glittering things which fall in
the path of those who prefer to follow the rich
dame, and to pick up the riches and honors which
fall from her cornucopia.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 59
This is in substance what a true artist said to me
only the other day, impatient, as he told me, of the
complaints of those who would pursue art, and yet
would have fortune.
But, indeed, all moral writings teem with this
remark in one form or other. You cannot have
inconsistent advantages. Do not shun this maxim
because it is common-place. On the contrary, take
the closest heed of what observant men, who would
probably like to show originality, are yet constrained
to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom
of the world. Such things are wiser than jDroverbs,
which are seldom true except for the occasion on
which they are used, and are generally good to
strengthen a resolve ratlier than to enlighten it.
These latter words of mine fall upon an inatten-
tive ear ; for my distant descendant, who has been
gradually becoming more composed during the pro-
gress of this moral essay, at last falls quite asleep.
Perhaps the great triumph of all moral writings,
including sermons, is that at least they have pro-
duced some sweet and innocent sleep.
Poor fellow ! I now see how careworn he seems,
though not without some good looks, which he owes
to his great-great-great-grandmother, of whom, as
he lies there, he. puts me much in mind. He ought
6o COMPAKIOKS OF MY SOLITUDE.
to thank me for those good looks, and to admit that
winning some beauty for the family is at least as
valuable as that Woodcot chase which he thinks I
ought to have laid hold of. But our unfair de-
scendants never think of any thing in our favor:
this gout and that asthma and those mortgages are
all remembered against us ; we hear but little on
the other side.
Sleep on, dear distant progeny of mine, and I will
keep the night watches of your anxious thought.
CHAPTER V.
'nr^HESE companions of my solitude, my reveries,
take many forms. Sometimes, the nebulous
stuff out of which they are formed, comes together
with some method and set purpose, and may be
compared to a heavy cloud, — then they will do for
an essay or moral discourse ; at other times, they
are merely like those sportive disconnected forms of
vapor which are streaked across the heavens, now
like a feather, now like the outline of a camel,
doubtless obeying some law and with some design,
but such as mocks our observation ; at other times
again, they arrange themselves like those fleckered
clouds, where all the heavens are regularly broken
up in small divisions, lying evenly over each other
with light between each. The result of this last-
mentioned state of reverie is well brought out in
conversation : and so I am going to give the reader
an account of some talk which I had lately with mv
friend Ellesmere.
Once or twice before I have used this name Elles-
mere as if it were familiar to others as to myself.
It is to be found in a book edited, as it appears, by
62 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
a neighboring clergyman, named Dunsford, who was
obliging and laborious enough to set down some
conversations in which he, Ellesmere, and mysell
took part ; and which he called Friends in Council.
There is no occasion to refer to this book to undjr-
s*and Ellesmere: a man soon shows himself by his
talk, if he does by any thing. Moreover the average
reader will find the book a somewhat sober, not to
say dull affair, embracing such questions as slavery,
government, management of the poor, and such like.
The reader, however, who is not the average reader,
may perhaps find something worth agreeing with, or
differing from, in the book.
I flatter myself that last sentence is very skilful.
The poor publisher, or rather his head man, com-
plains sadly that not even the usual amount of ad-
vertisement, not to speak of puffing, is allowed to
him ; the good clergyman having a peculiar aversion
to such modes of dealing, and believing that good
books, if there were such things, should be sought
after, and not poked in the faces of purchasers like
Jews' penknives at coach doors. By this delicate
piece of flattery, for each reader will secretly conclude
that he is above the average and hasten to buy the
book, I shall have done more than n. ny puffs direct.
Therefore beat ease, man of business, the avenues to
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 63
thy shop will be thronged. I can utter this prophecy
with the more confidence as the shop in question is
in the high road to the Great Exhibition.
Well, my friend Ellesmere was with me for a day ;
we were lounging about the garden ; the great black
dog which I always let loose when Ellesmere is here,
to please him, was slowly following us to and fro,
hanging out his large tongue, and wishing we would
sit down, but still not being able to resist following
us about ; when Ellesmere suddenly interrupted
something I was saying with these words, " The
question between us almost comes to this : you want
a sheep-dog. I am satisfied with a watch-dog:
Rollo will do for me ; and, as you see, he is content
with my approbation."
This abrupt speech requires some explanation. I
had been talking about some matters connected with
statesmanship, and stricturing, perhaps too severely,
some recent acts of government, in which, as I said,
I detected some of the worst habits of modern policy
— a mixture of rashness and indecision — meddling
and doing nothing — spending, as I added, most of
the powder for the flash in the pan. Then I went
on to deplore, that always statesmanship appeared to
come upon the stage too late. Is nothing ever to be
done in time ? *
* Written in 1850.
64 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
A good deal of what I said is true, I think, but
ought to be taken " cum grano," as they say ; for men
who have lived a good deal in active life, and are
withdrawn from it, are apt to comment too severely
on the conduct of those who are left behind. They
forget the difficulty of getting any thing done in this
perplexed world, and their own former difficulties
in that way are softened by distance. It was well
that Ellesmere interrupted me. The conversation
thus proceeded.
Milverton. Yes, that is the point. I confess I
should like something of the sheep-dog in a ruler.
I think we, of all nations, can bear judicious inter-
ference and regulation ; we should not be cramped
by it.
Ellesmere, In a representative government is the
folly of the governed to find no place ?
Milverton, Yes, but, my good friend, you need
not be anxious to provide for that. Folly will find
a place even at the side of princes. That was the
thing symbolized by great men's jesters. But, putting
sarcasm aside, Ellesmere, I don't mean to blame
present men so much as present doctrines and
systems. Some of the men in power, or likely to
be, in this country, are very honest, capable, brave
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 6^
men, full of desire to do good. But they have too
little power, or rather, they meet with too much
obstruction. Now, it is not wise to swathe a creat-
ure up like a foreign baby, and then say, Exert
yourself, govern us, let there be no delay.
Ellesmere. The amount of obstruction is over-
estimated. If a ruling man wanted to do any thing
good, I think he could do it, though I do admit
that there are large powers of obstruction to be
encountered.
Milverton* I do believe you are right. A states-
man might venture to be greater and bolder than
his position or apparent power quite warrants. And
if he were to fall, he would fall — and there an end.
Ellesmere. And no such great damage either.
Milverto7t. But to return to your watch-dog and
sheep-dog. There are two things very different
demanded from statesmen : one, carrying on the
routine of office ; the other, originating measures,
setting the limits within which private exertion
should act. You do not mean to contend, Ellesmere,
that it would not have been wise for a government
to have interfered with railway legislation earlier
and more efficiently than it did.
Ellesmere. No, — few people know better than
I do the immense loss of time, money, labor, tem-
5
66 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
per, and happiness which might have been saved in
that matter.
Milverton. Now^ look again on Sanitary meas-
ures. Consider the years it has taken, and, for
aught I know, may yet take, to get a Smoke Prohi-
bition Bill passed. If such a thing is wise and
possible, let us have it ; if not, tell us it cannot be
done. I have taken instances in physical things
just as they occurred to me : 1 might have alluded
to higher matters which are left in the same way,
to see what will happen, to wait for the breezes,
perhaps the storms, of popular agitation.
Ellesmere. People in authority are as fearful of
attacking any social evil as men are of cutting down
old trees about their houses. There is always some-
thing, however, to be said for the old trees.
Milverto7t. It would mostly be better, though,
to cut them down at once, and begin to plant some-
thing at the proper distance from their houses.
Ellesmei'e. Well, Milverton, there is one thing
you must remember, and that is, that intelligent
men writing or talking about government are apt
to fancy themselves, or such men as themselves, in
power ; and so are inclined to be very liberal in
assigning the limits of that power. Let them fancy
some of the foolish people they know in this imagl-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 6^
nary position of great power ; and then see how the
intelligent men begin to shudder at the thought of
this power, and to desire very secure limits for it,
and very narrow space for its exercise.
Milverton. Intelligent public opinion will in
these days prevent vigorous action in a minister from
hardening into despotism.
Ellesmere. Please repeat that again, my friend.
*' Intelligent public opinion ? " Were those the
words ? did I catch them rightly }
Milverton, You did. There is such a thing,
Ellesmere. It is not the first opinion heard in the
country ; it is not always loud on the hustings ; but
surely there are a great number of persons in a
country like this, who try to think, and eventually
form intelligent public opinion.
Ellesmere. I am afraid they are not a very
active body.
Milverton. Not the most active ; but they come
in at some time.
Ellesmere. I do not wish to be impertinent, but
do any of these people who ultimately (ultimately,
I like that word), form intelligent public opinion,
live in the country ? I can imagine a retired wisdom
in some Court in London, say Pump Court for
instance, but I cannot fancy the blowsy wisdom of
the country.
68 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
Milverton. Now, Ellesmere, do not be pro-
voking.
Ellesmere, I am all gravity again ; but just
allow me to propound one little theory, namely,
that it is when the retired wisdom of town is reviv-
ified by country air (on a visit) that it is apt to
develop itself into — what is it? — oh — " intelligent
public opinion."
Milverton, Now, as you have had your joke, I
will proceed. I have a theory that the tempera-
ment and habits of mind of individual statesmen
have a good deal to do with government. I do not
yet believe that we are all compounded into some
great machine of which you can exactly calculate
the results.
Ellesmere, What is your pet temperament for
a statesman?
Milverton. That is a large question : one thing
I should be inclined to say, with respect to his habit
of mind, — he should doubt till the last, and then
act like a man who has never doubted.
Ellesmere. Cleverly put, but untrue, after the
fashion of you maxim-mongers. He should not act
like a man who has never doubted, but like a man
who was in the habit of doubting till he had
received sufficient information. He should not con-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 69
vey to you the idea of a man who was given to
doubt, or not to doubt ; but of one who could wait
till he had inquired.
Milverton, Your criticism is just. Well, then,
another thing which occurs to me respecting his
habits of mind is, that he should be one of those
people who are not given to any system, and yet
who have an exceeding love of improvement and
disposition to regulate.
Ellesmere. That is good. I distrust systems. I
find that men talk of principles ; and mean, when you
come to inquire, rules connected with certain systems.
Milverton. This enables me to bring my notions
of government interference to a point. It should be
a principle in a statesman's mind that he should not
interfere so as to deaden private action : at the same
time he should be profoundly anxious that right and
good should be done, and consequently not fear to
undertake responsibility. He should not be en-
trapped, mentally, into any system of policy which
held him to interfere here, or not to interfere there;
but he should be inclined to look at each case on its
own merits. This is very hard work. Systems save
trouble, — the trouble of thinking.
Ellesmere. There is some sense in what you %?iy.
If we talk no more about statesmanship (and to tell
70 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
the truth I am rather tired of the subject), our dia-
logue will end like the dialogues in a book, where,
after much sham stage-fighting, the author's opinion is
always made to prevail. By the way, T dare say you
think that the nurser}^ for Statesmen is Literature ;
and that in these days of railwa3's, a short line from
Grub Street to Downing Street (a single set of rails,
as no one will want to return) is imperatively needed.
Milverton. No, I do not. I think that good Lit-
erature, like any other good work, gives notice of
material out of which a statesman might choose. To
make a good book, my dear friend, is a very hard
thing, I suspect. I do not mean a work of genius.
Of course such are very rare. But to give an account
of any transaction ; to put forward any connected
views ; in short to do any mere literary work well ;
it requires many of the things which tend to make a
good man of business, — industry, for instance,
method, clearness, resolve, power of adaptation.
Ellesmere. Yes, no doubt : foreign nations seem
to have profited so much from calling literary men
to their aid, that —
Milverton. That is an unjust sneer, Ellesmere.
Some of the writings of the men to whom I know
you allude, do not fulfil the condition of being good
books ; are full of false antitheses, illogical conclu-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. >ji
sions, vapid assertions, and words arranged accord-
ing to prettiness, not to meaning. Such books are
beacons ; they tell all men, the people who wrote us
are sprightly fellows, but cannot be trusted, they love
sound more than sense, pray do not trust them with
any function requiring sense rather than sound.
But you are not to conclude because some men
make use of Literature, perhaps the only way open
to them of carrying their views into action, that they
could not act themselves. Napoleon was always
writing early in life ; Caesar indited books, even a
grammar ; a whole host of captains and statesmen in
the sixteenth century were writers. Follow Cer-
vantes, Mendoza, Sidney, Camoens, Descartes, Paul
Louis Courier, to the field, and come back with them
— if you ever do come back alive, you individual
clothed with horsehair and audacity ; and then follow
them to their studies and see whether they cannot give
a good account of themselves in both departments.
Ellesmere. Pistol is come back again on earth,
or Bombastes Furioso, neither of whose characters
sits well upon you. But, my friend, we are wont in
law to look to the point at issue ; we were talking
of statesmen, not of soldiers.
Milverton, Machiavelli —
Ellesmere. That worthy man !
72 COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE.
Milverton, Caesar again ! Lorenzo de' Medici,
James the First of Scotland, Milton, Bacon, Grotius,
Shaftesbury, Somers, St. John, Temple, Burke. And
were I to rack my brains, or my books, I could no
doubt make an ample list.
Ellesmere. Good, bad, and indifferent : here they
come, altogether.
Milverton, And have there been no bad states-
men amongst tnose who had no tincture of letters.'*
Ellesmere. One or two, certainly.
Milverton. You know, Ellesmere, I have never
talked loudly of the claims of literary men, and have
always maintained that for them, especially when
they are of real merit, to complain of neglect, is for
the most part absurd. A great writer, as I think Mr.
Carlyle has well said, creates a want for himself —
a most artificial one. Nobody wanted him before he
appeared. He has to show them what they want him
for. You might as well talk of Leverrier's planet
having been neglected in George the Second's time.
It had not been discovered : that is all.
There may be misunderstandings as to the nature
of literary merit, as indeed of all merit, which may
prevent worldly men from making due use of it in
worldly affairs. For instance, I should say that diplo-
matic services are services peculiarly fit to be per-
COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE. 73
formed by literary men. They are likely to be more
of cosmopolites than other men are Their various
accomplishments serve them as means of attaching
others in strange countries. Their observations are
likely to be good. One can easily see that a great
deal of their habitual work w^ould come into play in
such employments. And there is an appearance of
hardship in not giving, at least occasionally, to men
w^ho are particularly shut out from most vsrorldly ad-
vantages, those offices which tliey promise to be most
fitted for.
Ellesmere, It would improve many a literary man
greatly to have, or to have had, some real business.
Milverton, No doubt. Indeed, I have always
thought it is a melancholy thing to see how shut up,
or rather I should say, how twisted and deformed a
man becomes by surrendering himself to any one
art, sdence, calling, or culture. * You see a person
become a lawyer, a physician, a clergyman, an
author, or an artist ; and cease to be a man, a whole-
some man, fairly developed in all ways. Each
man's art or function, however serviceable, should
be attached to him no more than to a soldier his
sword, which the accomplished military man can
lay aside, and not even remind you that he has ever
worn such a thing.
74 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
Ellesmere. An idea strikes me ; I see how literary
men may be rewarded, literature soundly encour-
aged, and yet the author be injured the least possible
by his craft. Hitherto we have given pensions for
what a man has written. I would do this : I would
ascertain when a man has acquired that lamentable
facility for doing second-rate things which Is not
uncommon in literature as In other branches of life,
and then I would say to him, I see you can write,
here is a hundred a year for you as long as you are
quite quiet. Indeed, I think pensions and honors
should generally be given to the persons who could
have done the things for which such rewards are
given, but who have not done them. I would say
to this man, You have great parliamentary influence,
you did not use it for mere party purposes ; there is
a peerage for you. You, turning to another man,
might have become a great lawyer, or rather a law-
yer in great place : you had too much —
Milverton. Modesty —
JEllesmere. Pooh, nonsense ! modesty never did
anybody any harm. No, let me go on with my
speech. You had too much honesty, or scrupulous-
ness, to escape being thrown out for the borough of
which (as a lawyer to get on in the highest
offices must please a constituency as well as under-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 75
stand his business) was fatal to you. Here, how-
ever, is a baronetcy for you.
Here, you, Mr. Milverton, you might have written
two books a year (dreadful thought !), you have not
always inflicted one upon us. Be Guelphed, and
consider yourself well off. Keep yourself quiet for
several years, and we may advance you further.
Oh ! what a patron of arts and letters is lost in
me ! Now this dog can bark and make a horrible
noise to distinguish himself; he does not do it —
that is why I like you so much, my dear Rollo (at
that instant, unluckily, Rollo, taking heed of Elles-
mere's comical gestures, and seeing that something
was addressed to him, began to frisk about and
bark). Oh, dear me! I see one can't praise or
encourage any creature without doing mischief.
Milverton, You have not to reproach yourself
for having done much in this way.
Ellesmere, Too much, — sadly too much. But
here comes John with a solicitous face, to get your
orders about planting the trees which came last
night, and which ought to have been put in early
this morning. Attend to them : they are your great
works ; some of them may live to a remote pos-
terity : and while you are about it, my good fellow,
do put in something which will produce eatables.
76 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
Those fir-cones are very pretty things, but hard to
eat. Remember that a certain learned gentleman,
who hopes to live to a good old age, is very fond of
mulberries ; and if some trees were put in now, he
might have something good to eat when he comes
into the country, and be able to refresh himself
after delivering judicious opinions on all subjects.
So we separated, I to my trees, and Ellesmere to
take the dog out for a walk.
CHAPTER VI.
T RESOLVED to-day to go out into the neighbor-
ing pine-wood alone, to con over some notes
which I am anxious to read by myself, with only an
occasional remark from a wood-pigeon, or what may
be gained from the gliding, rustling squirrel. There
is scarcely any thing in nature to be compared with
a pine-wood, I think. I remember once when, after
a long journey, I was approaching a city ennobled
by great works of art, and of great renown, that I
had to pass through what I was told by the guide-
books was most insipid country, only to be hurried
over as fast as might be, and nothing to be thought
or said about it. But the guide-books, thougK very
clever and useful things in their way, do not know
each of us personally, nor what we secretly like and
care for. Well, I was speeding through this " un-
interesting" country, and now there remained but
one long dull stage, as I read, to be gone through
before I should reach the much-wished-for city. It
was necessary to stay some time (for we travelled
vetturino fashion) at the little post-house, and I
walked on, promising to be in the way whenever
78 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
the vehicle should overtake me. The road led
through a w^ood, chiefly of pines, varied, however,
occasionally by other trees.
Into this wood I strayed. There was that almost
indescribably soothing noise (the Romans would
have used the word " susurrus"), the aggregate of
many gentle movements of gentle creatures. The
birds hopped but a few paces off', as I approached
them ; the brilliant butterflies waved hither and
thither before me ; there was a soft breeze that day,
and the tops of the tall trees swayed to and fro po-
litely to each other. I found many delightful rest-
ing-places. It was not all dense wood ; but here
and there were glades (such open spots, I mean, as
would be cut through by the sword for an army to
pass) ; and here and there stood a clump of trees
of different heights and foliage, as beautifully ar-
ranged as if some triumph of the art of landscape
had been intended, though it was only Nature's way
of healing up the gaps in the forest. For her heal-
ing is a new beauty.
It was very warm, without which nothing is beau-
tiful to me ; and I fell into the pleasantest train of
thought. The easiness of that present moment
seemed to show the possibility of all care being
driven away from the world some day. For thus
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 79
peace brings a sensation of power with it. I shall
not say what I thought of, for it is not good always
to be communicative ; but altogether that hour in
the pine-wood was the happiest hour of the whole
journey, though I saw many grand pictures and
noble statues, a mighty river and buildings which
were built when people had their own clear thoughts
of what they meant to do, and how they would do
it. But in seeing these things there is, so to speak,
something that is official, that must be done in a
set way ; and, after all, it is the chance felicities in
minor things which are so pleasant in a journey.
You had intended, for instance, to go and hear some
great service, and there was something to be done,
and a crowd to be encountered ; and you open your
window and find, as the warm air streams in, that
beautiful sounds come with it ; in truth your win-
dow is not far off from an opening in one of the ca-
thedral windows, and there you stay drinking in all
the music, being alone. You feel that a bit of good
fortune has happened to you ; and you are happier
all the day for it.
It is the same thing in the journey of life : pleasure
falls into no plan.
I think I have justified my liking for a pine-wood ;
8o COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
and though the particular wood I can get at here is
but a poor thing as compared with the great forests
I have been thinking of, yet, looked at with all the
reminiscence of their beauties, its few and mean par-
ticulars are so wrought upon by memory and fancy,
that it brings before me a sufficient picture, half
seen, half recollected, of all that is most beautiful
in sylvan scenery.
To my wood then I wandered ; and, after pacing
up and down a little, and enjoying the rich color of
the trunks of the trees, I sat down upon a tree that
had been lately felled, and read out my notes to my-
self. Here they are. They begin, I see, with a
little narration ; which, however, is not a bad be-
ginning.
It was a bright winter's day ; and I sat upon a
garden-seat in a sheltered nook towards the south,
having come out of my study to enjoy the warmth,
like a fly that has left some snug crevice to stretch
his legs upon the unwontedly sunny pane in Decem-
ber. My little daughter (she is a very little thing
about four years old) came running up to me, and
when she had arrived at my knees, held up a strag-
gling but pretty weed. Then, with great earnest-
ness, and as if fresh from some controversy on the
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 8l
subject, she exclaimed, " Is this a weed, Papa ; is
tliis a weed ? "
" Yes, a weed," I replied.
With a look of disappointment she moved off to
the one she loved best amongst us ; and, asking the
same question, received the same answer.
" But it has flowers,'* the child replied.
" That does not signify ; it is a weed," was the
inexorable answer.
Presently, after a moment's consideration, the
child ran off again, and meeting the gardener just
near my nook, though out of sight from where I
sat, she coaxingly addressed him.
" Nicholas dear, is this a weed ? "
" Yes, miss, they call it ' Shepherd's purse.* "
A pause ensued : I thought the child was now
fairly silenced by ^futhority, when all at once the
little voice began again, '* Will you plant it in my
garden, Nicholas dear ? do plant it in my garden."
There was no resisting the anxious entreaty of
tlie child ; and man and child moved off together to
plant the weed in one of those plots of ground
which the children walk about upon a good deal,
and put branches of trees in and grown-up flowers,
and then examine the roots (a system as encourag-
ing as other systems of education I could name),
and which they call their gardens.
6
82 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
But the child's words " Will you plant it in my
garden ? " remained upon my mind. That is what
I have always been thinking, I exclaimed : and it is
what I will begin by saying.
And, indeed, dear reader, if I were to tell you
how long I have been thinking of the subject which
I mean to preface by the child's fond words ; and.
how hopeless it has at times appeared to me to say
any thing worth hearing about it ; and how I have
still clung to my resolve, and worked on at other
things with a view of coming eventually to this,
you would sympathize with me already, as we do
with any man who keeps a task long in mind and
heart, though he execute it at last but poorly, and
though it be but a poor task, such as a fortune for
himself, or a tomb for his remains. For we like to
see a man persevere in any thin"^.
Without more preface, then, I will say at once
that this subject is one which I have been wont to
call " the great sin of great cities " — not that in
so calling it, I have perhaps been strictly just, but
the description will do well enough. For what is
the thing which must so often diminish the pride of
man when contemplating the splendid monuments
of a great city, its shops, its public buildings, parks,
equipages, and above all, the wonderful way in
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. St^
which vast crowds of people go about their affairs
witli so little outward contest and confusion ? I im-
agine the beholder in the best parts of the town,
not diving into narrow streets, wandering sickened
and exhausted near uncovered ditches in squalid sub-
urbs, or studiously looking behind the brilliant sur-
face of things. But what is it which on that very
surface, helping to form a part of the brilliancy
(like the prismatic colors seen on stagnant film),
conveys at times to any thoughtful mind an impres-
sion of the deepest mournfulness, a perception of
the dark blots upon human civilization, in a word,
some appreciation of the great sin of great cities ? The
vile sewer, the offensive factory chimney, the squal-
id suburb tell their own tale very clearly. The girl
with hardened look, and false imprinted smile, tells
one no less ominous- of evil.
In fact I do not know any one thing which con-
centrates and reflects more accurately the evils of
any society than this sin. It is a measure of the want
of employment, the uncertainty of employment, the
moral corruption amongst the higher classes, the
want of education amongst the lower, the relaxation
of bonds between master and servant, employer
and employed ; and, indeed, it expresses the want
84 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
of prudence, truth, light, and love in that commu-
nity.
In considering any evil, our thoughts may be classed
under three heads, — the nature of it, the causes of it,
the remedies for it. Often the discussion of any one
of these great branches of the subject involves the
other two ; and it becomes difficult to divide them
without pedantry. But in general, we^ may, for
convenience, attend to such a division of the subject.
I. The Nature.
The nature of the evil in this case is one which
does not require to be largely dwelt upon ; and yet
several things must be said about it. One which
occurs to me is the degradation of race. Thousands
upon thousands of beautiful women are by it con-
demned to sterility. As a nation, we should look
with exceeding jealousy and alarm at any occupation
which claimed our tallest men and left them without
offspring. And, surely, it is no light matter, in a
national point of view, that any sin should claim the
right of consuming, sometimes as rapidly as if they
were a slave population, a considerable number of.
the best-looking persons in the community.
How slight, however, is the physical degradation
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 85
compared with the mental degradation caused by
this sin : and here I do not mean only the dishonor
of the individuals, but the large social injury which
the mere existence of such a thing causes. For it
accustoms men to the contemplation of the greatest
social failures, and introduces habitually a low view
of the highest things. We are apt to look at each
individual case too harshly ; but the whole thing is
not looked at gravely enough. This often happens
in considering any great social abuse ; and so we
frequently commence the remedy by some great
injustice in a particular case.
In appreciating the nature of this evil, the feelings
of the people concerned with it are a large part of
the subject. On the one side are shame, pride,
dejection, restlessness, hopelessness, and a sense of
ill-usage resulting in a bitter effrontery, a mean
heartlessness, and a godless remorse. As a mere
matter of statesmanship such a class requires to be
looked to as pre-eminently dangerous. On the other
side is often the meanness without the shame ; and
a permanent coarseness and unholiness of mind is
inflicted upon the sex that most requires refinement
and spirituality in the affections.
To return, however, to a consideration of the feel-
ings of the poor women ; it may be noticed that they
86 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
have an excessive fear of being left alone with their
own recollections, which is, no doubt, a great obstacle
to their being reclaimed. Withal there is something
very grand though sad, that one of the main obstacles
to outward improvement lies in the intensity of shame
for the wrong-doing, in a dumb but profound remorse.
You may see similar feelings operating very variously
among the greatest men whose spiritual state is at
all known to us. Poor Luther exclaims, " When I
am assailed with heavy tribulations, I rush out among
my pigs, rather than remain alone by myself. The
human heart is like a millstone in a mill ; when you
put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises
the wheat to flour ; if you put no wheat, it still grinds
on, but then it is Itself it grinds and wears away."
Certainly the Gospel seems especially given to
meet these cases of remorse, and to prevent despair
(not the tempter but the slave driver to so many
crimes) from having an unjust and irreligious hold,
not so much on men's fears as on their fancies —
especially their notions of perfection as regards
themselves. For I doubt not but that men and
women much lower down In the scale of cultivation
and sensibility than we imagine, are haunted by a
sense of their own fall from what they feel and think
they ought to have been.
n. The CausesS " " °^
The main cause of this sin on the wom^rr*s pllTl
is want, — absolute want. This, though one of the
most grievous things to contemplate, has at the same
time a large admixture of hope in it. For, surely,
if civilization is to make any sufficient answer for
itself, and for the many serious evils it promotes, it
ought to be, that it renders the vicissitudes of life
less extreme, that it provides a resource for all of
us against excessive want. Hitherto we have not
succeeded in making it do so, but it is contended,
and with apparent justice, that it acts better in this
respect than savage life. At any rate, to return to
the main course of my argument, it is more satis-
factory to hear that this evil is a result, on one side
at least, of want rather than of depravity.
The next great cause is in the over-rigid views
and opinions, especially as against women, ex-
pressed in reference to unchastity. Christianity has
been in some measure to blame for this ; though, if
rightly applied, it would have been the surest cure.
" Publicans and sinners ! " Such did He prefer
before the company of Pharisees and hypocrites.
These latter, however, have been in great credit
88 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
ever since ; and, for my part, I see no end to their
being pronounced for ever the choice society of the
world.
The virtuous, carefully tended and carefully
brought up, ought to bethink themselves how little
they may owe to their own merit that the}^ are vir-
tuous, for it is in the evil concurrence of bad dispo-
sition and masterless opportunity that crime comes.
Of course, to an evil-disposed mind, opportunity
will never be wanting ; but, when one person or
class of persons is from circumstances peculiarly
exposed to temptation, and goes wrong, it is no
great stretch of charity for others to conclude that
that person, or class, did not begin v/ith worse dis-
positions than they themselves who are still without
a stain. This is very obvious ; but it is to be
observed that the reasoning powers which are very
prompt in mastering any simple scientific proposi-
tion, experience a wonderful halting in their logic
when applied to the furtherance of charity.
There is a very homely proverb, about the fate of
the pitcher that goes often to the water, which might
be an aid to charity, and which bears closely on
the present case. The Spaniards, from whom I
dare say we have the proverb, express it prettily
and pithily.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 89
" Cantarillo que muchas vezes va a la fuente,
O dexa la asa, o la frente."
"The little pitcher that goes often to the fountain, either
leaves the handle or the spout behind some day."
The dainty vase, which is kept under a glass case
in a drawing-room, should not be too proud of re-
maining without a flaw, considering its great advan-
tages.
In the New Testament we have such matters
treated in a truly divine manner. There is no pal-
liation of crime. Sometimes our charity is so
mixed up with a mash of sentiment and sickly feel-
ing that we do not know where we are, and what is
vice, and what is virtue. But here are the brief
stern words, " Go, and sin no more ; " but, at the
same time, there is an infinite consideration for the
criminal, not however as criminal, but as human
being : I mean, not in respect of her criminality,
but of her humanity.
Now, an instance of our want of obedience to
these Christian precepts has often struck me in the
not visiting married women whose previous lives
will not bear inspection. Whose will ? Not merely
all Christian people, but all civilized people, ought
to set their faces against this excessive retrospection.
But if ever there were an occasion on which men
90 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
(I say men, but I mean more especially women)
should be careful of scattering abroad unjust and
severe sayings, it is in speaking of the frailties and
delinquencies of women. For it is one- of those
things where an unjust judgment, or the fear of one,
breaks down the bridge behind the repentant ; and
has often made an error into a crime, and a single
crime into a life of crime.
A daughter has left her home, madly, ever so
wickedly, if you like ; but what are too often the
demons tempting her onwards and preventing her
return? The uncharitable speeches she has heard
at home ; and the feeling she shares with most of
us, that those we have lived with are the sharpest
judges of our conduct.
" Would you, then," exclaims some reader or
hearer, " take back and receive with tenderness a
daughter who had erred.'*" "Yes," I reply, "if
she had been the most abandoned woman upon
earth."
A foolish family pride often adds to this uncharit-
able way of feeling and speaking which I venture
to reprehend. Our care is not that an evil and an
unfortunate thing has happened, but that our family
has been disgraced, as we call it. Family vanity
mixes up with and exasperates rigid virtue. Good
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 91
heavens ! if we could but see where disgrace really
lies, how often men would be ashamed of their
riches and their honors ; and would discern that a
bad temper, or an irritable disposition, was the
greatest family disgrace that attached to them.
A fear of the uncharitable speeches of others is
the incentive in many courses of evil ; but it has a
peculiar effect in the one we are considering, as it
occurs with most force just at the most critical period,
— when the victim of seduction is upon the point
of falling into worse ways. Then it is that the un-
charitable speeches she has heard on this subject in
former days are so many goads to her, urging her
along the downward path of evil. What a strange
desperate notion it is of men, when they have
erred, that things are at the worst, that nothing can
be done to rescue them ; whereas Judas might have
done something better than hang himself.
But if we were all so kind, exclaims some rigid
man, we should only encourage the evil we wish to
subdue. He does not see that the first step in evil,
and the abandonment to it as a course of life, pro-
ceed mostly from totally different motives, and are
totally different things. One who dwelt on a secure
height of peace and virtue, has fallen sadly and
come down upon a table-land plagued with storms
92 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
and liable to attacks of all kinds, and from which
there is no ascent to the height again, but which is
still at an immense distance above a certain abyss;
and we should be very cautious of doing any thing
that might make the foolish, dejected, pride-led
person plunge hopelessly down into the abyss, in all
probability, to be lost forever.
Before quitting the subject of the family, I must
observe that, independently of any harshness of
remark which a young person may have been accus-
tomed to hear on matters connected with our present
subject, the ill-management of parents must be
taken into account as one of the most common
causes of this sin. It is very sad to be obliged to
say this, but the thing is true, and must be said.
We must not, however, be too much discouraged at
this, for the truth is, that to perform well any one
of the great relations of life is an immense difficulty ;
and when we see on a tombstone (those underneath
can now say nothing to the contrary) that the de-
funct was a good husband, father, and son, we may
conclude, if the words were truthful, that we are
passing by the mortal remains of an Admirable
Crichton in morality. And these relations are the
more difficult, as they are not to be completely ful-
filled by an abnegation of self, in other words, by a
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE 93
weak giving way upon all points ; which is the ruin
of many a person. I am not, however, going, in
this particular case, to speak of the spoiling of
children in the ordinary sense, but rather of the
contrary defect; which, strange to say, is quite as
common, if not more so. Of necessity the ages of
parents and children are separated by a considerable
interval ; the particular relation is one full of awe
and authority ; and the effect of that disparity of
years, and of that natural awe and authority, may
easily, by harsh or ungenial parents, be strained too
far ; other pei'sons, and the world in general (not
caring for the welfare of those who are no children
of theirs, and besides using the just courtesy
towards strangers) , are often tolerant when parents
are not so, which puts them to a great disadvantage ;
small matters are often needlessly made subjects of
daily comment and blame ; and, in the end, it comes
that home is sometimes any thing but the happy
place we choose to make it out, in songs and fictions
of various kinds. This, when it occurs, is a great
pity. I am for making home very happy to chil-
dren if it can be managed ; which, of course, is not
to be done by weak compliances, and having no
fixed rules. For no creature is happy, or even free,
as Goethe has pointed out, except in the circuit of
94 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
law. But laws and regulations having once been
laid down, all within those bounds should be very
kind at home. Now listen to the captious queru-
lous scoldings that you may hear, even as you go
along the streets, addressed by parents to children ;
is it not manifest that in after life there will be too
much fear in the children's minds, and a belief that
their father and mother never will sympathize with
them as others even might — never will forgive
them .? People of all classes, high and low, err in
the same way ; and, in looking about the world, I
have sometimes thought that a thoroughly judicious
father is one of the rarest creatures to be met with.
Another cause of the frailty of women, in the
lower classes, is in the comparative inelegance and
uncleanliness of the men in their own class. It also
arises from the fondness which all women have for
merit, or what they suppose to be such, so that their
love is apt to follow what is in any way distin-
guished ; and this throws the women of any class
cruelly open to the seductions of the men in the
class above. For women are the real aristocrats ;
and it is one of their greatest merits. Men's intel-
lects, even some of the brightest, may occasionally
be deceived by theories about equality and the like,
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 95
but women, who look at reality more, are rarely led
away by nonsense of this kind.
A cause of this sin of a very different kind, and
applying to men, is a dreadful notion which has
occasionally been adopted in these latter ages,
namely, that it is a fine thing for a man to have
gone through a great deal of vice — to have had
much personal experience of wickedness ; in short,
that knowledge of vice is knowledge of the world,
and that such knowledge of the world is eminently
useful. That is not the way in which the greatest
thinkers read the world ; they tell us that
" The Gods approve the depth and not the tumult of the
soul."
Self-restraint is the grand thing, is the great tutor.
But let us not talk insincerely even for a good end,
as we may suppose ; and therefore do not let us deny
that every evil carries with it its teachings. An in-
dulgence in dissipation teaches that dissipation is a
fatal thing ; and the man who learns that, very often
does not learn any thing more. But the excellence
of particular men must greatly consist in their appre-
ciating truths without having to pay .the full experi-
ence for them ; so that in those respects they have
a great start of other men. However, whether these
theories of mine be true or not, there can be no
96 COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE.
doubt, I think, that indulgence of any kind is a thing
which requires no theory to support it ; and I do not
think it will be found that the men of consummate
knowledge of the world have gained that knowledge
by vice ; but rather, as all other knowledge is gained,
by toil and truth and love and self-restraint. And
these four things do not abide with vice.
Probably, too, a low view of humanity which vice
gives, is in itself the greatest barrier to the highest
knowledge.
One great source of the sin we are considering is
the want of other thoughts. Here puritanism comes
in, as it has any time these two hundred years, to
darken and deepen every mischief. The lower or-
ders here are left with so little to think of but labor
and vice. Now, any grand thought, great poetry,
or noble song, is adverse to any abuse of the pas-
sions — even that which seems most concerned with
the passions. For all that is great in idea, that in-
sists upon men's attention, does so by an appeal,
expressed or implied, to the infinite within him and
around him. A man coming from a great repre-
sentation of Macbeth is not in the humor for a low
intrigue : and, in general, vice, especially of the
kind we are considering, seizes hold not of the pas-
sionate, so much as of the cold and vacant mind.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 97
On this account education and cultivation are to
be looked to as potent remedies. The pleasures of
the poor will be found to be moral safeguards rather
than dangers. I smile sometimes when I think of
the preacher in some remote country place implor-
ing his hearers not to give way to backbiting, not
to indulge in low sensuality, and not to busy them-
selves with other people's affairs. Meanwhile what
are they to do if they do not concern themselves
with such things.'* The heavy ploughboy, who
lounges along in that listless manner, has a mind
which moves with a rapidity that bears no relation
to that outward heaviness of his. That mind will
be fed ; will consume all about it, like oxygen, if
new thoughts and aspirations are not given it. The
true strategy in attacking any vice, is by putting in
a virtue to counteract it ; in attacking any evil
thought, by putting in a good thought to meet it.
Thus a man is lifted into a higher state of being,
and his old slough falls off him.
With women, too, there is this especial danger,
that fiction has hitherto been apt to tell them that
they are nothing if they are not loved, and to fill
their heads with the most untrue views of human
life. Fiction must try and learn that she is only
Truth with a mask on, so that she may speak truer
7
98 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
things sometimes with less offence than Truth herself.
Fiction must not represent love as always such a
very fine thing, or as tending invariably to felicity,
thus ignoring the trials of wedded life, and of affection
generally, — as if life were cut into two parts, one
all shade, the other all light. We cannot school
Love much ; but sometimes he might be induced to
listen to reason. And at any rate, all would agree
that much mischief may be done by unsound repre-
sentations of human life in this very important
respect.
But, our antagonist may say, these very fictions
are amusement, and so far of use as furnishing some
food for the mind. Yes : and I am not prepared to
say that bad fictions, or almost any thing, may not
be better than nothing for the mind. But when
continuous cultivation is joined to education (which
should be the object for statesmen and governing
people of all kinds), people will not be supposed to
be educated at the time of their non-age, and then
left sight of and hold of for evermore, as far as re-
gards their betters. But it will be seen that we are
all so far children, or at least like children in some
respects, throughout our lives, that the means of
cultivation should be successively offered to us.
It is difficult to see the drift of the foregoing words
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 99
without an example. But what I mean is this, —
do not let us merely teach our poor young people
to read and write and hear about all manner of arts,
sciences, and productions, and then dropping these
young people at the most dangerous age, provide
no amusements, enable them to carry on no pur-
suits, throw open no refinements of life to them,
show them no parks, no gardens, and leave them
to the pothouse and their sordid homes.
Of course they will go wrong if we do.
III. The Remedies.
As poverty came first among the causes, so to re-
move it must come first among the remedies. For
this purpose let it be carefully observed what class
of persons furnishes most victims to this sin. Try
and mend the evils of that class.
There will be two kinds of poverty, the one arising
from general inadequacy of pay for employment
tliat is pretty constant ; the other from uncertainty of
employment at particular periods. Each requires to
be dealt with differently. Frequently, though, they
are found combined.
To meet the first of these evils, more work must
be found in the country, or some hands must be re-
moved out of it.
lOO COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE.
If emigration is to be adopted, it should be done
in a different manner from any that has yet been
attempted.
But it seems as if something better than, or be-
sides, emigration might be attempted.
It may seem romantic, but I cannot help hoping
that considerable investigation into prices may lead
people to ascertain better what are fair wages, and
that purchases will not run madly after cheapness.
There are everywhere just men who endeavor to
prevent the price of laborers' wages from falling be-
low what they (the just men) think right. I have
no doubt that this has an effect upon the whole la-
bor-market, Christianity coming in to correct politi-
cal economy. And so, in other matters, I can conceive
tliat private persons may generally become more
anxious to put aside the evils of competition, and to
give, as well as get, what is fair.
But many things might be done to enable the wages
of the poor to go further : and surely the glory of a
state, and of the principal people in it, should be that
men make the most of their labor in that state.
Improvement of dwellings is one means.*
* Many a workwoman earns but 75. a week. She has to
pay 3*. or 35. 6d. for one miserable apartment Take hef
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. lOI
Improvements in the representation and transfer
of property are other great means to this end.
It may seem that I have wandered far from the
subject (the great sin of great cities) to questions of
currency and transfer of property. But I am per-
suaded that there is the closest connection between
subjects of this kind. The investment of savings is
surely a question of the highest importance. But it
is not that only which I mean. All manner of facil-
ities should be given to the poor to become owners
of property ; and wherever it could be managed, al-
most in spite of themselves, they should be made
so : that is, by putting by portions of their wages
when it is manifestly possible for this to be done,
as in the case of domestic servants, or where the em-
ployed are living with, or in some measure under
the guidance of, their employers.
Much is being attempted by various benevolent
persons in ways of this kind ; and the greatest atten-
tion should be paid to these experiments.
food at 35. or 25. 6d., and there will remain is. a week to
provide for clothing, sickness, charity, pleasurej and mis-
cellaneous expenditure of all kinds. It is easy to see that
any sudden mishap, such as sickness, must wi'eck such a
person's means; and also that where lies the chief room
for making these means go further, is in the expenditure
for lodgings, which now consumes about half her earnings.
T02 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
There are various things which the state could do
in these matters ; but it would require a very wise
and great government : and how is such a thing to be
got? In the act of rising to power, men fail to obtain
the knowledge and thought, and especially the pur-
pose, to use power. There is some Eastern proverb,
I think, about the meanest reptiles being found at the
top of the highest towers. That, as applied to gov-
ernment, is ill-natured and utterly untrue. But people
who are swarming up a difficult ascent, or maintain-
ing themselves with difficulty on a narrow ledge at a
great height, are not employed exactly in the way to
become great philosophers and reformers of mankind.
Constitutional governments may be great blessings,
but nobody can doubt that they have their price.
There are, however, excellent men in high places
amongst us at the present moment ; but timidity in
attempting good is their portion, especially by any
, way that has not become thoroughly invincible in ar-
gument. I suppose that any man who should try some
very generous thing as a statesman, and should fail,
would be irretrievably lost as a statesman.
Meanwhile socialism is put forward to ffil the void
of government: and if government does not make
exertion, we may yet have dire things to encounter.
By government in the foregoing sentence I mean not
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 103
only what we are in the habit of calling such, but all
the governing and directing persons in a nation.
Some of them are certainly making great efforts even
now, and there lies our hope.
But, supposing that the supply of workmen and
workwomen could be better adapted to the demand ;
and that means could be found to provide in some
measure for neutralizing the ill effects of the un-
certainty of employment (which two things, though
very difficult, are still not beyond the range of hu-
man endeavor and accomplishment), there would
yet remain many, very many, individual cases of
utter and sudden distress and destitution amongst
young women, which form the chief causes of their
fall. Now, how are these to be averted .f*
There should be some better means of intercom-
munication between rich and poor than there is at
present. It seems as if the priests of all religions
might perform that function, and that it should be
considered one of their most important functions. It
bhould be done, if possible, by some persons who
come amongst the poor for other purposes than to
relieve their poverty. At the same time, there might
be an administrative officer of high place and power
in the government, who should be on the alert to
I04 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
suggest and promote good offices of the kind I have
just alluded to. In reality the Minister of educa-
tion (if we had one) would be the real minister for
destitution, as doing most to prevent it ; and various
minor duties of a humane kind might devolve upon
him.
Any one acquainted with the annals of the poor
will tell how familiar such words are to him as the
following, and how true on inquiry he has found
them. " Father fell ill of the fever " {the fever the
poor girl may well say, for it is the fever which want
of air and water, and working in stifling rooms, have
brought upon many thousands of our workmen) ;
" mother and I did pretty well in the straw-bonnet
line while she lived ; but she died come April two
years : and I've been 'most starved since then, and
took to those ways."
" You were fifteen when your mother died, you
say, and you have no relations in this town ? "
" There is my little brother, and he is in the work-
house, and they let me go and see him on Mondays ;
and there is my aunt, but she is a very poor woman
and lives a long, long way off, and has a many
children of her own."
" You can read and write } "
" I can read a little."
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 105
Now, of course, there are thousands of cases of
this kind, in which one feels that the poor child has
slipped out of the notice and care of people who
would have been but too glad to aid her. I dare
say neither mother nor child ever went to any church
or chapel. And, in truth, let us be honest and
confess that going to church in England is somewhat
of an operation, especially to a poor, ill-clad person.
This system of pews and places, the want of open-
ness of churches, the length of the service resulting
from the admixture of services, the air of over-
cleanliness and respectability which besets the place,
and the difficulty of getting out when you like, are
sad hindrances to the poor, the ill-dressed, the sick,
the timid, the fastidious, the wicked, and the culti-
vated.
And then, there is nobody into whose ear the poor
girl can pour her troubles, except she comes as a
beggar. This will be said to be a leaning on my
part to the confessional. I cannot help that; I
must speak the truth that is in me. And I wish that
many amongst us Protestants, who would, I doubt
not, welcome the duty, could, without pledging our-
selves to all manner of doctrines, but merely by a
genial use of those common relations of life which
bring us in daily contact with the poor, fulfil much of
lOb COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
what is genuinely good in the functions of a confes-
sor, and thus become brothers of mercy and brothers
of charity to the poor.
Meanwhile it is past melancholy, and verges on
despair, to reflect upon what is going on amongst
ministers of religion, who are often but too intent
upon the fopperies of religion to have heart and
time for the substantial work entrusted to them —
immersed in heart-breaking trash from which no sect
is free ; for here are fopperies of discipline, there
fopperies of doctrine (still more dangerous as it
seems to me). And yet there are these words re-
sounding in their ears, " Pure religion and undefiled
is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the
world." And the word " world," as Coleridge has
well explained, is this order of things, the order of
things you are in. Clerical niceness and over-sanc-
tity, for instance, and making more and longer ser-
mons than there is any occasion for, and insisting
upon needless points of doctrine, and making Chris-
tianity a stumbling-block to many, — that, excellent
clergyman (for there are numbers who deserve the
name), that is your world, there lies your tempta-
tion to err.
It has occurred to me that schoolmasters and
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 107
schoolmistresses would form good means of com-
munication with the poor : and so much the better
from their agency being indirect as regards worldly
affairs ; * I mean that their first business is not to
care for the physical well-being of their pupils. In
after life, they would be likely to know something
of the ways and modes of life of their former pupils,
and would be most valuable auxiliaries to landlords,
master-manufacturers, to masters in general, and to
all who are anxious to improve the condition of
those under them.
While talking of the schoolmaster, we must not
omit to consider the immense importance, in its
bearing on our subject, of a better education for wo-
men — especially for women of what are called the
middling classes — an education which should de-
velop in them the qualities and powers which they
are most deficient in, such as stern reasoning ; which
is at the foundation of justice, and which should free
them from that absurd timidity of mind more than
* In this respect the opportunities of medical men are
very great; and surely the medical profession best eman-
cipates itself from any tendency to materialism, and dig-
nifies itself by entering upon the duties and the privileges
of a teacher and consoler, when it performs, as it very of-
ten does, some of those offices of charity which ever lie just
under its hands.
Io8 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
of body, which prevents their seeing things as they
are, and makes them, and consequently men, the
victims of conventionality.
This tiling, conventionality, is a great enemy to
those who would war against the sin we are con-
sidering. Hypocrisy is said to be the homage which
vice pays to virtue ; conventionality is the adoration
which both vice and virtue offer up to worldliness.
See its ill effects in this particular case. The dis-
cussion of our subject is almost beyond the pale of
conventionality. Years ago, an old college friend
defined this present writer as a man who could say
the most audacious things with the least offence. I
hope my friend was right, for, indeed, in discussing
this subject I need all that power now. Conven-
tionality stiffens up the whole figure and sets the
eyes in the fixed direction it pleases, so that men
and women can pass through the streets ignoring
the greatest horrors which surround them. And
consider what a dangerous thing it is, when it is
once presumed that there is any class with whom
we can have no sj^npathy ; that there are any beings
of a different kind from the rest of us. It is not for
us, collections of dust, to feel contempt. In a future
life we may have such a sui^vey as may justify con-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 109
tempt, but then we should have too much love to
feel it. But, indeed, in most cases, it is not con-
tempt, but conventionality, that induces us to pass by
and ignore what it is not consistent with good taste
to know any thing about.
But there is another fertile mode in which conven-
tionality works in increasing the great sin of great
cities. And that is by rendering all manner of im-
aginary wants real wants, and thus helping to en-
slave men and women. False shame has often, I
doubt not, led to the worst consequences, — the
shame, for instance, arising from not having the
clothes of a kind imagined to be fit for a particular
station ; and so, people submit to a vice to satisfy a
foible.
A class of persons who are found to furnish great
numbers of the victims to the sin we are considering,
is that of domestic servants. This leads to a suspi-
cion that there are peculiar temptations, weaknesses,
errors, and mismanagement incident to that class.
Their education, to begin with, is wretchedly defec-
tive. But besides that, they are particularly liable
to the slavery of conventionality : indeed, there are
few people more subdued by weak notions of what
it is correct for them to have, and to be, and to do :
no COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
which often ends in any thing but a correspondence
of the reality of their condition with their ideal. It
must be remembered, too, that they undergo, in an
especial degree, the temptation of being brought
near to a class superior to theirs in breeding and
niceness ; and, consequently, that they are very liable
to be discontented with their own.
But great improvement might be made in the man-
agement of servants. Their efforts to save money
should be directed and aided. New means might
be invented for that purpose. It might be much
more generally arranged than it is, both in house-
holds and in other establishments, that a fund should
be formed out of which those female servants who
remained a certain time should have a sum of mon-
ey, in fact what in official life is called " retired al-
lowances."
Then, of course, masters and mistresses should
recognize the fact, instead of needlessly discourag-
ing it, that men and women love one another in all
ranks, — that Mary, if a pleasant or comely girl, is
pretty nearly sure at some time or other to have a
lover. Let the master and mistress be aware of that
fact, and treat it as an open question which may be
discussed sometimes, with advantage to all parties.
Instead of such conduct, one hears sometimes that
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. ill
such maxims are laid down as that *' no followers
are allowed." What does a lady mean who lays
down such a law fn her household? Perhaps she
subscribes to some abolition society ; which is a good
thing in as far as it cultivates her kindly feelings
towards an injured race. But does she know that,
by this law of hers, as applied to her own house-
hold, she is imitating, in a humble way, one of the
worst things connected with slavery ?
As this prohibition extends to near relations as
well as to lovers, if obeyed it renders the position
of a servant-girl still more perilous as more isolat-
ed ; and, if disobeyed, it is a fertile source of the
habit of concealment, one of the worst to which all
persons in a subordinate situation are prone.
For my own part, I could not bear to live with
servants who were to see none of their friends and
relations : I should feel I was keeping a prison, and
not ruling a household.
Amongst the principal remedies must be reckoned,
or at least hoped for, an improvement in men as
regards this sin. To hope for such an improve-
ment will be looked upon as chimerical by some
persons, and the notion of introducing great moral
remedies for the evil in question as wholly romantic.
113 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
It seems Impossible: every new and great thing
does, till it is done ; and then the only wonder is
that it was not done long ago.
Oh that there were more love in the world, and
then these things that we deplore could not be. One
would think that the man who had once loved any
woman, would have some tenderness for all. And
love implies an infinite respect. All that was said
or done by Chivalry of old, or sung by Troubadours,
but shadows forth the feeling which is in the heart
of any one who loves. Love, like the opening of
the heavens to the Saints, shows for a moment, even
to the dullest man, the possibilities of the human
race. He has faith, hope, and charity for another
being, perhaps but a creation of his imagination :
still it is a great advance for a man to be profoundly
loving even in his imaginations. What Shelley
makes Apollo exclaim. Love might well say too : —
*' I am the eje with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine are mine,
All light of art or nature ; — to my song
Victory and praise in their own right belong.**
Indeed, love is a thing so deep and so beautiful,
that each man feels that nothing but conceits and
pretty words have been said about it by other men.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 113
And tlien to come down from this and to dishonor
the image of the thing so loved. No man could do
so while the memory of love was in his mind. And,
indeed, even without these recollections, we might
hope that, on the contemplation of so much ruin,
and the consideration of the exquisite beauty of the
thing spoiled, there would sometimes come upon
the heart of a man a pity so deep as to protect him
from this sin as much as aversion itself could do.
And we may imagine that even men of outrageous
dissipation, but who have still left some greatness
and fineness of mind (like Mirabeau for example),
will have a horror of the sin we are condemning,
though very sinful in other respects. And certainly
the disgrace to humanity that there is in indiscrim-
inate prostitution is appalling : and, like constrained
marriage for money, it has something more repul-
sive about it than is to be met with in things that
may be essentially more wicked.
I hope I am not uncharitable in saying this ; but
anybody who thinks so must remember that what
is alluded to by me is the worst form of the sin in
question ; as in fact it disgraces the streets of our
principal cities — in utter lovelessness and mercenar}'
recklessness.
8
114 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
I said above, *' the exquisite beauty of the thing
spoiled." And, in truth, how beautiful a thing is
youth — beautiful in an animal. In contemplating
it, the world seems young again for us. Each young
thing seems born to new hopes. Parents feel this
for their children, hoping that something will happen
to them quite different from what happened to them-
selves. They would hardly take all the pains they
do with these young creatures, if they could believe
that the young people were only to grow up into
middle-aged men and women with the usual cares
and troubles descending upon them like a securely
entailed inheritance. There is something fanciful in
all this, and in reality a grown-up person is a much
more valuable and worthy creature than most young
ones ; but still any thing that blights the young
must ever be most repugnant to hurnanity.
I had now read over all that I had put down in
writing ; and, as I laid aside the manuscript, I felt
how sadly it fell short of what I had thought to say
on this subject. I suppose, however, that even when
they are good, a man's words seem poor to himself,
for the workman is too familiar with the wrong side
of all his workmanship. Moreover, much must
always lie in the ear of the hearer. We say enough
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 115
to set alight the hidden trains of thought which abide
in the recesses of men's hearts, unknown to them ;
and they are startled into thinking for themselves.
After all, it is not often so requisite for a writer to
make things logically clear to men, as to put them
into the mood he wishes to have them in. I sup-
pose the snake-charmer and the horse-whisperer
have some such scheme.
But, said I, as I threw some stones into a pool
which was near me in a partial clearing of the wood,
I would go on with this work if I knew that all my
efforts would make no more stir than these pebbles
in that pool. And then I proceeded to think of the
topics which are yet before me, full of doubt and
difficulty. I should like to have some talk with
Ellesmere, I exclaimed ; I fear he will have no
sympathy with me, and an utter disbelief in anybody
doing any good in this matter. But he is a shrewd
man of the world, and he speaks out fearlessly. It
would be well to hear his remarks beforehand,
while they may yet be of use to me. I certainly
will consult him.
I stept out of the wood into the beaten road, a
change which I always feel to be like that which
occurs in the mind of a man who, having been
wrapt in some romance of his own, suddenly disen-
Il6 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
gages himself from it and talks with his fellows
upon the ordinary topics of the day, affecting a
shrewd care about the price of corn and the state
of our foreign relations.
By the time I reached Worth- Ashton I had left
all forest thoughts well behind me, and was quite
at home on the broad beaten road of common-place
affairs.
CHAPTER VII.
^UNIVERSIT
T HAVE read the foregoing notes to Ellesmere,
whom I asked to come here the first lawyer's
hoHday that he could make. During the reading,
which was in my study, he said nothing, but seemed,
as I thought, unusually grave and attentive. When
it was finished, he proposed that we should walk
out u2Don the downs. Still he made no remark,
but strolled on moodily, until I said to him, " I am
afraid, Ellesmere, you have some heavy brief which
sits upon your mind just now ; or, perhaps, I have
somewhat wearied you in reading so much to you
upon a subject about which you probably do not
care much." " I care more than you do," he re-
plied — "forgive my abruptness, Milverton, but
what I say is true. To show you why I do care
would be to tell you a long story, and to betray to
you that which I had never intended to tell mortal
man.
" But, if you care to hear it, I will tell you ; it
bears closely upon some of your views, and may
modify them in some way. I can talk to you on
such a theme better than to almost any man, for it
Il8 COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE.
is like talking to a philosophic system ; and yet
there is still some humanity left in you, so that one
may hope for a little sympathy now and then with-
out having too much, or being afflicted with pity
and wonder and foolish exclamations of any kind."
I did not interrupt him to defend myself, being too
anxious to hear what he had to say. Besides I saw
this attack upon me was partly an excuse to himself
for telling me something which he hardly meant to
tell. He threw himself down upon the turf, and,
after a few minutes' silence, thus began : —
Well, I was once upon my travels staying for a
few days in a German town, not a very obscure or
a very renowned one ; but indeed the whereabouts
is a very unimportant matter, and I do not particu-
larize any of the minute circumstances of my story,
because I do not wish hereafter to be reminded of
them. I remember it was on a Sunday, and the
day was fine. I remember, too, I went to church,
to a Protestant church, where I did not understand
much of what I heard, but liked what I did. They
sang psalms, such as I fancy Luther would have
approved of; and I thought it would be a serious
thing for a hostile army to meet a body of men who
had been thus singing. Grand music, such as you,
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 119
for instance, would like better, is a good thing too.
Our cathedrals might have combined both. I do
not know why I tell you all this, for it does not im-
mediately concern my story, but I suppose it is
because I do not like to approach it too quickly, and
I must linger on the details of a day which is so
deeply imprinted upon my memory. I remember
well the sermon, or rather the bits of it which I
understood, and out of which I made my sermon
for myself. That pathetic word verloren (lost)
occurred many times. Then there was a great deal
about the cares of this life occupying so much time,
and then about the pleasures, or the thoughts of
misspent youth being impressed upon manhood, to
the perennial detriment of the character. I made
out, or fancied I did, that it was a sermon showing
how short a time was given to spiritual life. I dare
say it was a very common-place sermon that I made
of it ; but somehow, the sermons we preach to our-
selves, in which, by the way, we can be sure of
taking the most apt illustrations from the store of
our own follies, are always interesting. And when
the good preacher, a most benign and apostolic-
looking man, pronounced the benediction, I felt as
if I had been hearing some friendly searching words
which might well be laid to heart. After the ser-
I20 COMPANIONS OF M7 SOLITUDE.
mon was over, I strolled about. The day moved
on, and towards evening time, I went with the
stream of the towns-people, gentle and simple, to
some public gardens which lay outside the town and
were joined to it by beautiful walks. People speak
of the .sadness of being in a crowd and knowing no
one. There is something pleasurable in it too. I
wandered amongst the various groups of quiet,
decorous, beer-imbibing Germans, who, in family-
parties, had come out to these gardens to drink
their beer, smoke their pipes, and hear some music.
In those unfortunate regions they have not made a
ghastly idol of the Sunday.
At last I sat down at a table where a young girl
and a middle-aged woman, who carried a baby, were
refreshing themselves with some very thin potation.
They looked poor decent people. I soon entered
into conversation with them, and therefore did not
leave it long a matter of doubt that I was an Eng-
lishman. I perceived that something was wrong
with my friends, although I could not comprehend
what it was. I could see that the girl could hardly
restrain herself from bursting into tears ; and there
was something quite comical in the delight she ex-
pressed at some feats on the tight-rope, which she
would insist upon my looking at, and her then, in a
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. I2I
minute afterwards, returning to her quiet distress
and anxious deplorable countenance. A proud
English girl would have kept all her misery under
due control, especially in a public place ; but these
Germans are a more simple natural people.
Having by degrees established some relations be-
tween the party and myself by ordering some coflee
and handing it round, and then letting the baby play
with my watch, I asked what it was that ailed the
girl. The girl turned round and poured out a tor-
rent of eloquence, which, however, considerably ex-
ceeding the pace at which any foreign language
enters into my apprehension, was totally lost upon
me ; except that I perceived she had some com-
plaint against somebody, and that she had a noble
open "countenance which, from long experience of
the witness-box, I felt was telling me an unusual
proportion of truth. One part of the discourse I
perceived very clearly to be about money, and as
she touched her gown (which was very neat and
nice), it had something to do with the price of the
said gown.
We then talked of England, whereupon she asked
me to take her with me as a servant. This abrupt
speech might astonish some persons : but not those
who have travelled much. I dare say the same re-
quest has often been made to you, Milverton.
122 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUJ)E.
Milverton. Oh, yes. They fancy this is an earth-
ly paradise for getting money, bounded by a contin-
ual fog.
♦ Ellesmere. She then questioned me much as to
the distance of England from where we were. And
as I saw she was in a desperate mood, and might
attempt some desperate adventure, I took care to
explain to her the distance and the difficulties of
the journey. Besides which, I contrived, putting
the severest pressure on my stock of German, to
convey to her that London was rather an extensive
town, containing two millions of people, and that it
was not exactly the place for an unfriended young
girl to be wandering about.
" The same thing everywhere, everywhere," she
exclaimed, in a tone of mournful reproach, which I
felt was levelled at our unchivalrous sex in general.
I felt interested to understand her story, and be-
ginning to question her in detail again, ascertained
so far, that she was or had been a servant, that «he
had been accustomed to take charge of child: en,
having had eleven under her charge, that the wages
were most wretched, which they certainly were ;
but still, it was not that or any of the ordinary kind
of grievances which was now distressing her. When-
ever we came to the gist of the discourse, she be-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 123
came more emphatic and I more stupid. At last I
bethought me that if she were to write out what
she had to say, I could then understand it well
enough. This was a bright idea, and one which I
was able to convey to her. She was to bring me
the writing on the ensuing morning in the great
square. And having come to this agreement we
parted ; I taking care, with lawyer-like caution, to
tell her that I did not know whether I could be of
*iny use to her, with other discouraging expressions.
The next morning, duly fortified with my pocket
dictionary, I sat myself down to read her statement.
Ah, how clearly the whole scene is before me. It
was on a broad bench, close to a hackney-coach
stand, within sight of the palace. She looked over
me^ and read aloud; and when I could not make
out a word, we paused, and the dictionary was put
in requisition. The nearest hackney-coachman ly-
ing back on his box threw now and then an amused
glance at the proceeding. Hers was a simple
touching story, touchingly told. I now know every
word, every letter of it ; but then it was very hard
for me to comprehend.
It began by giving her birth, parentage, and edu-
cation. She was born of poor parents in the coun-
try, a few miles out of the town. She was now an
124 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
orphan. She had come into service in the town.
Her master had endeavored to seduce her ; but she
had succeeded in giving some notion of her misera-
ble position to a middle-aged man, and friend of her
family, v^ho had taken an interest in her, and prom-
ised to receive her into his service. Then she gave
w^arning to her mistress, who could not imagine
the cause, and was displeased at her leaving. She
could not tell her mistress for fear of vexing her.
The character given by the mistress (which I saw)
went well with this statement, as it was the praise
of a person displeased.
The new master that was to be, had told her
where to go to (the lodgings where she was now
staying), and ordered her to get decent clothes be-
fore coming into his service. He did not live in
that town. She left her place accordingly, provided
herself with the necessary things, and awaited his
orders. Meanwhile his plans were changed. He
had just married, was probably about to travel, and
wrote that he could not take her in. I am not sure
that there was any deliberate wrong-doing or treach-
ery on his part — merely a wicked carelessness ;
forgetting what a thing it is for a poor girl to be out
of place, and not knowing that she had taken the
step, perhaps, at the time he wrote. She had writ-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 125
ten again, and had received no answer. She was
left in debt and in the utmost distress.
This is the substance of what I eventually got out
by cross-examination. She had been out into the
suburbs in search of a place when I met her yester-
day. The woman with the child, who was no rela-
tion, had reiterated to me there that she was a good
girl and in great distress*
The usual wicked easy way of getting out of her
difficulties had been pressed upon her — Ich mag'
das Geld nicht auf eine schlechte Art bekommen^
sonst wilrde ich es in kurzer Zeit haben ; but she
trusted that "the dear God would never permit this,
so she put her trust in him." Ich hoffe aber, der
Hebe Gott wird das nicht zugeben^ denn ich ver^
lasse mich auf Ihn.
I remember that, occasionally, while we were
spelling over what she had written, her large beau-
tiful hand (do not smile, Milverton, a hand may be
most beautiful and yet large) rested on the page.
There was a deep scar upon it, the mark of a burr ,
that told of some household mishap. I have seen
many beautiful hands before and after, but none so
beautiful to me.
At last we got through the writing and paused.
" This is a bad business," I exclaimed ; and
126 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
then I fell into a reverie, not upon her particular
case so much, as upon the misery that there is in
the world. At last I looked up and felt quite re-
morseful at the wistful agonized expression of the
girl, whom I had been keeping in suspense all this
trnie while indulging my own thoughts. She evi-
dently thought (you know the extremely careless ill-
dressed figure I generally am) that to assist her was
quite out of my power. And so it was at the mo-
ment, for I had not the requisite silver about me.
Indeed why should the rich carry any money about
with them, when they have always the poor to bor-
row it from ? However, I had some silver in my
pocket and gave her that, promising to bring the
rest. Her ecstasy was unbounded : of course she
began to cry (no woman is above that) ; though
seeing my excessive dislike to that proceeding, she
did the best to suppress it, only indulging in an oc-
casional sob. Her first idea was what she could do
for the money. She would work for any time. We
had found out that writing was better than talking ;
and here are her very words (I always carry them
about with me), " Was soil ich Ihnen fur einen
Dienst dafiir thun? " " What shall I do for you
in the way of any service for this?" "Nothing,"
I replied, " but only to be a good girl."
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLJTUDE. 12*J
One thing I have omitted to tell you : but I may
as well tell it. It is no matter now. While we
were reading over the letter, I happened to ask her
whether she had a lover. I had hardly asked the
question before I would have given any thing to
have been able to recall it, as we sometimes do in
Court when a question is objected to. Her simple
answer came crushing into my ears, "Yes, but a
poor man and far away." She thought my object
in asking was to ascertain whether there was any
help to be got from any other quarter : this she an-
swered, so like her sensible self, without any bri-
dling-up or nonsense of any kind — a simple answer
to a simple question. But the words went down
like a weight into my heart, which has never been
quite lifted off again. In short, Milverton, I loved.
What should possess me to-day to tell you this
wild story, I know not. I know you really care for
nothing but great interests and great causes, as you
call them. With intense mad love for any one hu-
man being you cannot sympathize. I always noted
the same in you from your boyhood upwards. Talk
to you of a body of men — of a class — of a mil-
lion, for instance, of people suffering any thing, and
you are immediately interested. But for anyone of
us you care nothing. I see through you, and always
128 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
have. But I like you. Do not answer me, you
know it is true.
I did not answer him ; though knowing what he
said to be most untrue, and yet to have just that dash
of plausibility in it which makes injustice so hard to
unravel. He proceeded. I saw Gretchen (that was
her name) more than once again, and had a great
deal of talk with her, finding my first impressions
amply verified ; and I still think her one of the best
intellects, and most beautiful natures, I have ever
seen. I had in my pocket a very learned letter from
one of the German Professors of law to whom I had
delivered a letter of introduction on passing through
his town, on some points of jurisprudence, referring
to Savigny's work. The parts of this which had been
unintelligible I made her construe to me ; some of it
was quite independent of technicalities, but merely
required hard thinking and clear explanation. The
girl with my help made it all out. But of course it
was not of such themes that she liked to talk ; for
women love personal talk, and their care is to know,
not what men think about, but what they feel. One
speech of hers dwells in my mind. " You must be
very happy at home," she said. I thought of my
mouldy chambers and the kind of life I lead, and
replied with an irony I could not check, " Very : "
and so satisfied her gentle questionings.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 129
I did not delay my departure longer than I had at
first intended ; for in these cases when you have done
any good, it is well to be sure you do not spoil it in
any way. She would not have any more money than
a trifling sum that was a little more than sufficient to
pay off the debts already due, and they amounted
to the very same sum she had originally mentioned
to me in the gardens. We parted. Before parting
she begged me to tell her my name : then timidly she
kissed my hand ; and, bursting into tears, threw her
hood over her face and hurried away a little distance.
Afterwards I saw her turn to watch the departure of
the huge diligence in which I had ensconced myself.
Milverton. And you never saw her any more .?
Ellesmere. Once more. Not being a philosopher
or a philanthropist, I do not easily forget those I once
care for. I studied how to protect her in every way.
I mastered the politics of that German town ; and
learnt all the intricacies of the little Court there. I
ascertained every thing respecting our relations with
it, and who amongst our diplomatists was desirous of
the residence there, when there should be a change.
I busied myself more in politics than I had done ;
and I believe I must own that my speech on the
intei-vention, which had its merits and cost me great
labor, was spoken for Gretchen. Of course, I need
9
130 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
hardly say that I spoke only what I most sincerely
thought; but I should probably have let politics
alone but for her sake. At last there was an oppor-
tunity of a new appointment being made of a Minister
to that German Court ; and the man who wished for
it, and whose just claims I had aided as I best could,
obtained it. His wife, Lady R., one of those brilliant
women of the world who are often more amiable
than we give them credit for being, had long noticed
the care with which I had cultivated her society. She
imagined it was for one of her beautiful daughters,
and did not look unkindly upon me. Before she
went to reside at I undeceived her, telling her
the whole truth (the best thing in such a case) and
binding her to secrecy. She promised to look out
for Gretchen, and to take her into her household. I
told Lady R. that Gretchen had a lover, and said,
that if any thing could be done for him, without lift-
ing him out of his rank, it should be. Neither would
I have Gretchen made any thing different from what
she was. I could have given her money by hand-
fuls ; but that is not the way to serve people. At
the same time I implored Lady R. to let me know
immediately in case any thing should ever occur to
break off the marriage.
Milverton. And you would have put in your suit
and married this girl ?
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 131
Ellestnere. There was but little chance, I fear ;
but you may be sure no opportunity would have
escaped me. As for the world, I am one of the
few persons who really care but little for it. The
hissing of collected Europe, provided I knew the
hissers could not touch me, would be a grateful
sound rather than the reverse — that is, if heard at a
reasonao.e distance.
Well, but I told you I saw Gretchen once more.
Yes, once more. You may remember that some "time
ago I had a very severe illness, and was not able to
attend the Courts on an occasion when I was much
wanted. This appeared in the newspapers of the
day, and so, I conjecture, came to the knowledge of
Gretchen ; who, in her quiet indefatigable way, had
learnt English, and was a great student, as I after-
wards heard, of English newspapers. She had also
contrived to learn more about my life than I chose
to tell her when I answered her question about
my being happy ; and the poor girl had formed
juster notions of the joyousness and comfort of a
lawyer's chambers in London. She begged for
leave of absence to visit a sick friend : Lady R.
conjectured, I believe, where she was going, and
consented.
A few days afterwards there was a knock at my
132 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE
door (I was still very ill and unable to leave my
sitting-room, but solacing life as best I could by the
study of a great pedigree-case), when my clerk, with
an anxious and ashamed countenance, put his head
in, made one of these queer faces which he does
when he thinks a great bore is wishing to see me and
that I had better say " no," and exclaimed, " A
young woman from Germany, sir, wants to see you."
I knew, instinctively, who it was, but had the pres-
ence of mind to make a gesture signifying I would not
see her (for I could not have spoken), and I was
afraid in my present state of weakness I should be-
tray myself in some way, if I were to see her unpre-
pared. While the parleying was going on in the
passage, I collected myself sufficiently to ring for my
clerk and tell him, he might appoint the young wo-
man to come in the afternoon. By that time I had
reflected upon my part and was somewhat of myself
again. She came : I scolded and protested ; she did
nothing in reply, but look at me and say how thin I
was ; and there was no resisting the quiet, affection-
ate, discreet way in which she installed herself every
day. for some hours as head nurse. Even my old
laundress relaxed so far as to say that Gradgin (for
that was what she called her) was a good girl an^ not
hoity-toity : and my clerk, Peter, a very cantankerous
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUlS&^j, t^^Sf
fellow, was heard to remark, that for his partw^^awiv I i
not like young women much, but Miss Gradgin was
better than most, and certainly his master did
somehow eat more of any thing made by her than by
anybody else, and never threatened now to throw the
cnicken-broth he brought in at his head.
I jest at these things, Milverton : and in truth
what remains for us often in this world but to jest?
Which of the Qiieens was it, by the way, who on
the scaffold played with the sharpness of the axe, and
said something droll about her little neck ? Well, I
jest ; but this visit of Gretchen's was a very severe
trial to me. It is a common trial though, I dare say.
No doubt many a person dotes upon or adores some
one else, who is, happily, as unconscious of the
doting or adoration as Ram Dass, or any other
heathen deity, of the fanatic love of his worshippers.
To the loving person, however, it is like walking
over hot iron with no priest-anointed feet, and yet
with unmoved countenance, not even allowed to look
stoical. I could not resist listening sometimes to
Gretchen's wise, innocent, pleasant talk about all
the new things she was seeing ; and perhaps if I had
not kept carefully before me the claims of the absent
peasant lover, some day when she was moving about
me likf» sunlight in the room, I might in some
134 COMPANIONS OF 31 Y SOLITUDE.
moment of frenzy, which I should never have for-
given myself, have thrown myself at her feet and
asked her to take these dingy chambers and my faded
self and all my belongings under her permanent con-
trol. But wiser, sterner, juster thoughts prevailed.
I got better, and it was time for Gretchen to be
thinking of going. Of course no foreigner can leave
London without seeing the Thames Tunnel ; and I
observed that the morose Peter, though in general
very contemptuous of sight-seeing and sight-seers,
was wonderfully ready to escort Gretchen to see the
Tunnel, which I thought a great triumph on her part.
I spared myself the anguish of parting with her : a
case came on rather unexpectedly in a distant part of
the country, and I was sent for " special," as we say.
Kings and tetrarchs might have quarrelled for what I
cared ; I would not have meddled in their feuds to
lose one hour of Gretchen's sweet companionship,
if I might have had it heartily and fairly ; but, as
things were, I thought this a famous opportunity for
making my escape without a parting. And so I
started suddenly for the North, bidding Gretchen
adieu by letter, expressing all my gratitude for her
attention, and being able to rule and correct my ex-
pressions as it seemed good to me. Before I returned
she had left, taking leave of me in a fond kind letter,
COMPANIONS OF M7 SOLITUDE. 135
in which she blamed me much for being so regard-
less of my health, and added a few words about my
evident anxiety to get rid of her, which sounded to
me like some wild strain of irony. Ever since, my
chambers have seemed to me very different from what
they were befDre : I would not quit them for a palace.
One or two new articles of furniture were bought by
Gretchen, who effected a kind of quiet revolution in
my dusky abode. These are my household gods.
One of her alterations I must tell you. You know
my love for light and warmth ; like that of an Asiatic
long exiled in a Northern country, whose calenture
is not of green fields, but of sufficient heat and light
once more to bathe in. Well, Gretchen soon found
out my likings ; and this was one of her plans to
gratify me and make me well. My principal room
has a window to the south-west, a bay-window, or
rather a window in a bayed recess. After ascertain-
ing, as well as she could, from Peter what were the
limits throughout the year of the sun's appearance
on the walls of this recess, on a sudden one morning
Gretchen came in with a workman and two antique
looking-glasses of the proper size, which (a present
of her own, and taxing her resources highly) she
fixed one on each side of the recess, from whence
Ihey have ever since thrown a reflected light into tho
136 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
room, which makes it feel at times uncomfortable,
like an ill-dressed person in a great company. It
is a trifling thing to mention to you, but very char-
acteristic of her.
I have said nothing to you, Milverton, w^hich can
describe herself; and, indeed, I always look upon
all descriptions of women, in books and elsewhere,
as having something mean, poor, and sensuous
about them. I may tell you that she always, from
the first time I saw her, reminded me a little of the
bust of Cicero. She had the same delicate critical
look, though she was what you would call a great
large girl. She might have been a daughter of his
if he had married, what he would have called, a
barbarian German woman. In nature, she has often
recalled to me Jeanie Deans, only that she has
more tenderness. She would have spoken falsely
(I am sorry to say) for Effie ; and would have died
of it.
Lady R., when she was over here some little time
ago, said to me, to comfort me, I suppose, that
though Gretchen was a sweet girl, she did not quite
see what there was in her to make her so attractive
to a man like me. But these women do not always
exactly understand one another, or appreciate what
makes them dear to particular men. She added,
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 137
*' But still I do not know how it was Gretchen
became the great authority in our household : they
all referred to her about every thing, and she did a
good deal of their work." In fact, she was the
personification of common sense ; only that what
we mean by common sense is apt to be hard, over-
wise, and disagreeable : hers was the common sense
of a romantic person, and of one who had great
perception of the humorous. I think I hear her
low, long-continued, dimpling laugh as I used to put
forth some of my odd theories about men and things,
to hear what she would say. And she generally
did say something fully to the purpose. But action
was her forte. There was a noiseless, soft activity
about her like that of light.
Milverton, You speak of her as if she were
dead. Is it so?
JSllesmere. No : much the same thing, — mar-
ried. There was an opportunity for advancing her
lover. It was done, not without my knowledge.
She had by this time saved some money. They
were married six months ago. I sent the wedding
gown. Do not let us talk any more about it. I tell
it yon to show you how deeply I care about your
subject ; for sometimes I think with terror, as I go
along the streets, that but for my providential inter-
138 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
ference, Gretchen might have been like one of those
tawdry girls who pass by me. Yes, she might. I
observed that she had a pure horror of debt : and
I do not know that circumstances might not have
been too strong for her virtue. For by nature vir-
tuous, if ever woman was, she was.
EUesmere was silent for a few minutes. Then he
said, " Let us have no more of this talk to-day, or,
indeed, at any time, unless I should begin the sub-
ject. One of the greatest drawbacks upon making
any confidence is that, as regards that topic, you
have then lost the royal privilege of beginning the
discourse about yourself, and another can begin to
«peak to you, or to think (and you know that he is
thinking), about the matter, when you do not wish
*-o be so much as thought of by any one."
He then began to speak about some chemical
experiments which he wanted me to try ; and from
that went on to talk about infusoria, wishing me to
undertake some microscopical investigations to con-
firm, or disprove, a certain theory of his ; adding,
by way of inducement, *' These lower forms ar.c'
orders of life ought, you know, to be very interest-
ing to people in the country, who themselves, in
comparison with us, the inhabitants of towns, can
only, by courtesy, and for want of more precise and
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 139
.accurate language, be said to live. In fact, their
existence is entirely molluscous." Thus, in his
usual jeering way, he concluded a walk which left
me with matter for meditation for many a solitary
ramble over the downs, which we then traversed
on our way homewards.
CHAPTER VIII.
TT is not often in the course of our lives, especially
•^ after we have passed our nonage, that we can
reckon upon being thoroughly undisturbed and free
to think of what we like for a given time. It is one
of the advantages of travelling in a carriage alone,
that it affords an admirable opportunity for thinking.
The trees, the houses, the farm-yards, the woods flit
by, and form a sort of silent chorus from the out-
ward world. There is a sense of power in over-
coming distance at no expense of muscular exertion
of one's own, which is not without an elevating and
inspiriting influence upon the thoughts. The first
thing, however, is, that we are pretty nearly sure of
being undisturbed. The noise around us is a meas-
ured one, and is accounted for ; it does not, there-
fore, fret the most nervous person. Dr. Johnson
thought that travelling in a post-chaise with a pretty
woman was one of the highest delights in life.
Very ungallantly I venture to suggest that the pretty
woman had better be omitted. She will talk some-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 141
times, and break the whole charm, thus preventmg
you even from thinking about her.
Having such notions of the high merits apper-
taining to the inside of a post-chaise in motion ; in
fact, considering it a place which, for the research
of truth, may be put in competition with the groves
of Academus, it was with some pleasure that I
found myself alone in the carriage which had con-
veyed Ellesmere to the neighboring railway station
on his return to town. It was the first time since
our walk to the downs that I had had to myself,
and been able to think over all that he had then
told me. He was right in saying that his story bore
close reference to the subject I have been consid-
ering. That such a man should find so much to
attach himself to in this poor German girl, who
might so easily have been found in a very ^different
situation, makes one think with dismay how some
of the sweetest and highest natures amongst women
may be in the ranks of those who are abandoned to
(he rude address of the coarsest and vilest of men.
I sa) *' some of the sweetest and highest natures,"
for there is a cultivation in women quite independ-
ent of literary culture, rank, and other advantages.
They are more on a level with each other than men,
I do not reckon this as a proof of their excellence r
142 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
nor do I at all indulge in the fancy that there is
something so peculiarly charming in uncultivated
people. On the contrary, they are seldom just, sel-
dom tolerant ; and, as regards innocence and child-
like nature, these merits abound in persons the
most cultivated, and even the most conversant with
the w^orld. I have no doubt we all appear simple
and unsophisticated enough to superior beings. It
is not, therefore, that I mean to laud the innocence
and naivete of ignorance : but only to point out
that there is a certain platform, as it v/ere, of grace
and unselfishness, — of tact, delicacy, and teacha-
bleness — - on which I have no doubt an immense
number of women are placed, which makes any
corruption of such high capabilities the more to be
regretted.
Dunsford, in his Friends in Council,, has failed
in representing Ellesmere, if he has not shown him
to be a most accomplished man and a thorough
gentleman ; not exactly the conventional gentleman,
but a man whom savages would certainly take to be
a chief in his own country, showing high courtesy
to others with a sort of coolness as regards himself:
the result of being free from many of the usual small
shames, petty ends, trivial vanities, and masked
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 143
social operations which dwarf men in their inter-
course with others, or make them like clowns daubed
over in ugly patches. His pursuits, as may have
been seen, are on a larger sphere than those of most
lawyers. Very observant, too, of the world, I have
scarcely a doubt he was right in his high apprecia-
tion of that girFs character.
We sometimes think we have no romance left ;
but with all our borrowed ways of thinking, our
foolish imitative habits, our estimations grosser than
those of Portia's disappointed suitors, some of us
occasionally do still look at things and people as
they are. And that alone produces romance enough.
I wonder whether Gretchen had any love for him !
Alas, I suspect, from a fond wistful way in which I
once saw Lucy look at him, that there is an English
girl who would mightily like to occupy Gretchen's
place in his heart. But he casts not a thought at
her : such is the perversity of things.
But I must turn from thinking about Ellesmere to
the consideration of my subject, which is favored by
this quiet moment and this retired spot. It seems
to me that the best thing I can do will be, not so
much to seek for new arguments and new views, as
to strengthen and enlighten those already put for-
ward in a preceding chapter.
144 COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE.
I spoke, for instance, there of the cause that
poverty was of this sin. Now women do not
equally partake with men in the general poverty in
a land, but they have to endure an undue propor-
tion of it, by reason of many employments being
closed to them ; so that the sex which is least able
and least fitted to seek for employment by going
from home, finds the means of employment at home
most circumscribed.
I cannot but think that this is a mismanagement
which has proceeded, like many others, from a wrong
appreciation of women's powers. If they were told
that they could do many more things than they do,
they would do them. As at present educated, they
are, for the most part, thoroughly deficient in method.
But this surely might be remedied by training. To
take a very humble and simple instance. Why is it
that a man-cook is always better than a woman-cook ?
Simply because a man is more methodical in his
arrangements, and relies more upon his weights and
measures. An eminent physician told me, that he
thought that women were absolutely deficient in the
appreciation of time. But this I hold to be merely
one instance of their general want of accuracy ; for
which there are easy remedies : that is, easy if begim
early enough. Now it does seem perfectly ludicrous
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 145
that in the dispensing of women's gear they should
need the intervention of men. I dare say there is
some good reason for the present practice, some
advantage gained ; but I should think it likely that
this advantage would be far more than counter-
balanced by the advantage of employing women
altogether in these transactions.
Again, in the processes of the arts, and in many
ways which I have not time or space to enter upon,
women might be provided with new sources of em-
ployment, if they were properly trained.
But the truth is, there is a great want of ingenuity
and arrangement throughout the world in not pro-
viding employment for its unemployed, both men
and women. Things that imperatively want to be
done stare you in the face at every comer.
If we consider the nature of the intellect of women,
we really can see no reason for the restrictions laid
upon them in the choice of employments. They
possess talents of all kinds. Government, to be sure,
is a thing not fit for them, their fond prejudices
coming often in the way of justice. Direction also
they would want, not having the same power, I think,
of imagination that men have, nor the same method,
as I observed before. But how well women might
work under direction. In how many ways where
10
146 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
tact and order alone are required they might be em-
ployed, and also, in how many higher ways, where
talent is required.
I suppose I shall have to say something about un-
happy marriages as a cause of the evil I have named
as the great sin of great cities. Of course there are
a great many unhappy marriages. A weighty moral
writer of tlie present day intimates that there is no
medium in the felicity, or infelicity, of marriage ;
that it is either the summit of joy, or the depth of
torment. I venture to differ from him in this re-
spect. On the contrary, it seems to me probable
that in marriage the whole diapason of joy and sor-
row is sounded, from perfect congeniality, if there
be such a thing (which I doubt), to the utmost ex-
tent of irritable uncongeniality.
How this may be I know not, but though unhap-
piness in marriage may form some justification of,
or at least some explanation for, other connections
more or less permanent, yet I contend no want of
domestic love or peace can justify the particular sin
which is the subject of our present theme.
At the same time I am far from pronouncing that
the law of divorce may not require considerable
modification ; but really there are so many large
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 147
questions to deal with in reference to this piesent
subject, that I feel I cannot presume to enter upon
this one of divorce, to discuss which properly would
require any one man's life. I cannot, however, omit
all allusion to it, as it has undoubted reference to the
subject in hand ; and I may remark that it is a great
deal easier to pass by Milton, or to sneer at him, for
his great work on The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce^ than to answer the arguments therein con-
tained. The truth is, that there is scarcely anywhere
a mind sufficiently free from the overruling influence
of authority on these and similar subjects to be
able clearly and boldly to apprehend the question
for itself.
However, it does not become us to pronounce, if
we are to judge from the results only, that our pres-
ent notions of marriage are the best possible. I
can imagine a native of some country where polyg-
amy is practised, contending that the state of things
in his own country in this respect is preferable to
that in ours ; not, perhaps, as producing less misery,
but at any rate less dishonor both to men and wo-
men. We should find it difficult to gainsay him
in tliis, as of course he would make much of the
immense and obvious evils of the sin we have been
considering.
148 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
The greatest and most dangerous objection — I
should rather say assertion — which will be made
against any thing that has been sai^ in this chap-
ter and the two preceding ones, is one that will be
uttered with a derisive smile by men of the world,
as they are called ; that is, of a very small section
of it. Thinking they are deeply cognizant of the
human heart, because they are very much afraid of
its aberrations, and that they are fully aware of the
powers of the imagination, from having little them-
selves and discouraging the little they ever had —
lapped, perhaps, in a kind of prosperity which sin-
gularly blinds those who have the misfortune to en-
joy an uninterrupted career of it — bounded by a
small circle of equally well-conditioned, self-satisfied
individuals — men of this kind pronounce not only
upon the influx and efflux of tea, coflTee, sugar and
gold (in which, by the way, their dicta are generally
wrong) , but they are also able specifically to declare
about the ebb and flow of the passions or the affec-
tions ; about the tenderest and the most delicate of
the relations in human life. Talk to any man of
this worldly class about moral causes, or religious
influences, he is equally at home with them, as if
you were to ask him about the subjects most " im-
mersed in matter." I can see the self-sufficient way
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 149
in which if he had lived some seven hundred years
ago, after the first crusade, he would have pronounced
with a wave of his hand after dinner, that there
never could be such another adventure again, as the
first had by no means been found to pay. But soon
all Europe is listening to the clink of hammers upon
harness, and thousands, hundreds of thousands, are
repeating an adventure not good in a commercial
sense, but still which gave a dignity to them such as
the stayers at home never attained.
Having damaged, as much as I can, the imagina-
ry opponents — who, I know however, will prove
real ones — before I bring their saying into pres-
ence, I will now tell what that saying will assur-
edly be.
In answer to all that has been urged in the way
of remedy for this evil, they will simply reply,
"But these things always must be ; the laws of sup-
ply and demand hold good in this case as in others :
to think otherwise is the mere dream of writers and
other ideologists : no wonder Napoleon disliked such
people : we do too."
To this, taking them on their own ground, I
would reply that at any rate the force of circumstan-
ces (a phrase they delight in) may be so adapted
and modified as only to meet the exact necessities
150 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
of the case. I mean, for instance, that those by na-
ture most inclined to innocence should have the
fairest opportunities of remaining innocent ; that, in
short, it should be the worst people that fell into the
worst ways. This, of course, is only an ideal scheme
too ; but there might be a practical tendency in that
direction.
In reality, however, it is the greatest mistake to
suppose that such laws of supply and demand are
not overruled by much higher influences. All things
depend for their ultimate aim and end on the spirit
in which they are undertaken ; which spirit cannot
well be concealed. The measured generosity of
mean people, whose gifts are all strictly related to
duty, does not deceive others ; the bystander knows
that these people are not generous, though he can-
not exactly confute them from their words or their
deeds. Again, people may pretend to be religious ;
but if the real spirit is not in them, its absence is
soon felt. I am merely giving these as instances of
the deficiency of the right spirit being felt, or per-
ceived, even when the outward deeds or words are
there. But the spirit which results from convic-
tion, and which gradually modifies public opinion,
is one of the most powerful things known : who
shall put limits to it.? It will meet and occasionally
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 151
master all the passions. Take the question of
duelling, for instance ; if you could have told a
man of former times, when duelling was rife,
that it would soon be almost done away with,
" What ! " he would have exclaimed, " will there
be no lovers, no jealous husbands, no walls to take
the inner side of, no rudeness, no drunkenness, no
calumny, no slander? And, if there are, how will
the quarrels that must arise from these things be ad-
justed? Do not talk such Utopian nonsense to me,
but come and let us practise in the shooting-gal-
lery." And, yet, see how stealthily, how unassum
ingly, how completely public opinion, the result of
a wise and good spirit gradually infused into men,
has' disarmed duellism ; as quietly, in fact, as the
king's guard in former days would have taken away
the weapons of any two presumptuous gentlemen
who brought their quarrelling too near his Majesty's
vicinity in his parks.
One of the kind of reproaches that will ever be
made, with much or little justice (generally with lit-
tle justice), against any men who endeavor to reform
or improve any thing, is that they are not ready with
definite propositions ; that they are like the Chorus
in a Greek play, making general remarks about
152 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
nature and human affairs, without suggesting any
clear and decided course to be taken. Sometimes
this reproach is just ; but very often,- on the other
hand, it is utterly unreasonable. Frequently the
course to be taken in each individual instance is
one that it would be almost impossible to decide,
still more to lay down with minuteness, without
a knowledge of the facts in the particular instance :
whereas what is wanted is not to suggest a course of
action, but a habit of thought which will modify not
one or two actions only, but all actions that come
within the scope of that thought.
Again, there are people who are not so unreason-
able as to expect suggestions that will exactly meet
their own individual cases, but still they wish for
general rules or general propositions to be laid down.
There must be instant legislation to please them ;
something visibly done. And often it is needful that
something should be done, which however falls,
perhaps, under the functions of other men than the
original social reformers. There is always such a
belief in what is mechanical, that men of ordinary
minds cannot assure themselves that any thing is
done, unless something palpable is before them ;
unless they can refer to a legislative act, or unless
there is a building, an institution, a newspaper, or
COMPAxYlONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 153
some visible thing, which iUustrates the principle
But in reality the first thing is to get people to be o^
the same mind as regards social evils. When once
they are of this mind, the evils will soon disappear.
A wise conviction is like light ; it gradually dawns
upon a few minds, but a slight mist rises also with
this rise of light ; as the day goes on and the light
rises higher, spreads further, and is more intense,
growth of all kinds takes place silently and without
great demonstration of any kind. This light per-
meates, colors, and enlarges all it shines upon.
Now, to apply some of these thoughts to our
present subject. I do not believe that there will
always be a certain set amount of wrong-doing in
this or in any other case. On the other hand, I do
not expect that people will suddenly rush into virtue.
To take a very humble instance, the suppression of
smoke, one of the most visible evils in the world,
how long a time it takes to subdue that. From Count
Rumford's time to the present day, how many persons
have written, preached, talked, experimented, on the
' subject. And if this long process has to take place
in so obvious a matter, how much more must it be
so in the subtler regions of men's minds, in their
habits of justice, or of forethought. But, insensibly,
even in these dim and remote regions, good coun-
154 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
sels, or evil counsels, will eventually prevail, — as
quietly, perhaps, but as surely, as the submerged
'coral rock grows and increases from the accumula-
tions of minute, gelatinous, molluscous creatures.
The train of thought which I have described above,
did not of course occur to me in the methodical way
in which I have now put it down, but with frequent
breaks and interruptions both from internal thoughts
and the aspect of external objects. Now it was the
noise of the mill, now the beauty of some homestead,
now the neatness of some well-cultivated field, or the
richness of some full farmyard that claimed my
attention. But when I had finished thinking of the
answer that must be given to that worldly objection
" that there is a demand for wickedness, and that
there must be a supply of it," I leaned back in the
carriage and turned my mind to other branches of
the subject. Just at that time, whether it was that a
troop of little children came out of a school-house
close to the road, or that I noticed the early budding
in the hedgerows, as I passed along, I began to think
of what had been alluded to in a former chapter ;
namely, what a beautiful thing youth is, and how
sad that it should be Spoilt at its outset. And I went
on to think not only of the negative, that is, of the
loss of so much beautiful life and promise, but of
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE 155
the positive misery inflicted, which surely is well
worth taking into consideration.
Tragedy is very grand, with grand accessories,
" Presenting Thebes', or Pelops' line,
Or the Tale of Troy divine,"
when a purple-clad man, free from all the pettinesses
of life, pours out a strain of sorrow which melts all
hearts, and goes some way to dignify the sufferings
of all humanity. But, after all, in some squalid den,
as great if not a greater tragedy is often transacted,
only without the scenery and decorations of the other,
when some poor victim of seduction — now steeped
in misery and sunk in the abysses of self-degrada-
tion, amidst blasphemy, subject to reviling that she
scarcely hears or easily endures from habit — lies
on the bed of sickness thinking of her mother's gentle
assiduities in some of the ailments of her childhood,
and covers her face with her hands at the thought
that that mother, dead, perhaps heart-broken, may
now, a spirit, be looking down upon her. Well
might Camoens wonder " That in so small a theatre
as that of one poor bed, it should please Fortune to
represent such great calamities. And I too," he
says, " as if these calamities did not suffice, must
needs put myself on their side ; for to attempt to
resist such evils would be something shameless."
156 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
I had meditated but a few minutes on this cry of
anguish, which I seemed to hear as it came from the
dying-bed of one of the most unfortunate of men of
genius, and which I fancied, too, I heard from many
other death-beds, when we turned out of the main
road into the lanes which lead to Worth-Ashton.
With all our pretences at governing or directing
our thoughts, how they lie at the mercy of the
merest accident! Once in these lanes I quitted my
subject, and began to think how the way to my house
might be shortened, and I was already deep in the
engineering difficulties of the proceeding, when
somewhat satirically I said to myself. What a mania
you have for improving every thing about you :
could you not, my dear Leonard, spare a little of
this reforming energy for yourself? One would
think that you did not need it at all, to see the way
you go on writing moral essays. Myself replied to
me. This is a very spiteful remark of yours, and very
like what Ellesmere would have said. Have I not
always protested in the strongest manner against
the assumption, that a writer of moral essays must
be a moral man himself.-^ Your friend Ellesmere,
in reference to this very point, remarks that if all
clergymen had been Christians, there would by this
time have been no science of theology. But, jesting
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 157
apart, it would be a sad thing indeed if one's ideal
was never to go beyond one's own infirmities. How-
ever, myself agrees with you, my dear I, so far, that
it is much safer to be thought worse than better than
one really is : and so blacken me as much as you
like, and detract from me as much as you can, so
that you do not injure my arguments or my per-
suasions. These I believe in, and will endeavor to
carry out, just as if they had been uttered by the
most irreproachable and perfect man in the world.
Maintaining this strange dialogue as stoutly as if
there had been two persons instead of one in the
carriage, I, or rather we, (I wonder whether the
editorial " we " is thus really dual, consisting of a
man and his conscience) — we, I say, reached the
gate of Worth- Ashton, pretty good friends with each
other, and pleased with what we had thought over
during our ride homewards.
CHAPTER IX.
OINCE giving an account of my last reverie, I
have been abroad for a short time, which has
a httle interrupted my work, but I now resume it
with less feeling of weariness. I seldom think
much during a tour. Indeed I come out to avoid
thinking. I do not come to see what can be said or
thought about any place, but to see it. Neverthe-
less, occasionally, I make a few notes consisting of
some disjointed words, sufficient to recall to me, and
to me only, what were the things which made an
injpression upon me.
One scene of this last journey I find commemo-
rated in this short way ; and, as it is connected with
some thoughts which carry on the subjects we (my
readers and I) have lately been considering, I v/ill
recall it.
I shall not tell with any preciseness where I was :
for if I did so, and did it well, my countrymen
would flock to see the place. Not that I grudge
them seeing any thing. I suppose it happens to
many of us, when abroad, to feel a little ashamed
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 159
now and then of these same countrymen ; but yet
1 often think with pleasure that even the most
coarse and obtuse traveller brings back something
besides self-conceit. One regrets that such oppor-
tunities are not always bestowed on minds fully able
to profit by them ; but still one hopes that the most
uncultivated people cannot escape getting some little
advantage from their travels ; and if they were to
stay at home, they would Jiot the less remain uncul-
tivated people.
Such travellers, however, would not thank me at
all for describing a place which might thus get into
the guide-books, and then, alas ! form one more
spot which they must stop to look at, while they
would far rather scamper over more ground and see
more well-known places with great names. And
as for the people who see things for themselves,
they will not pass by tlie spot in question without
giving it a due regard.
And what a scene it is ! Across a wide extent of
water lies a bridge of immense length formed of
uneven planks supported upon piles. There is no
railing to the bridge, so that you seem almost upon
the water, and you have the sensation of being at
sea, with the grandeur and without the misery (as
it is to me) of such a situation. Here and there is
l6o COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
an oratory out-jutting from the line of planks, with
a narrow edging of stone round it.
It was evening when I came upon the bridge, but
not so late as to prevent me from seeing well the
country about me, which at intervals went down
mto the water in narrow tongues of land, with
buildings upon them. Immediately on the heights
above me were an old tower and a monastery.
Near the land some giant reeds rose up from the
water, but did not sway to and fro the least, for
there was not a breath of wind. The only noise
was a plash of the water against a jetty, or the occa-
sional jumping of a fish. On one of the strange-
looking rocks there, which come abruptly out of the
water as if asking you a question from the deep,
reposed a meditative crane standing upon one
leg.
On one side of the bridge the hills rise up around
you evenly, and the mountains are well balanced in
form : on the other side, they descend abruptly and
ascend again, leaving a most picturesque gorge.
Two poplars were to be seen on the lowland near
this gorge.
As evening deepened, and no more peasants
returning homeward from the other side saluted me
with their Good-night, the houses on the surrounding
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. i6l
hills showed like glow-worms, and all was still, save
the plash of the water on the jetty.
I find that new places do not always bring new
thoughts : sometimes they only intensify those which
one has thought before. My mind went back to
what is held by many persons to be a most prosaic
subject, — namely, education. And I thought how
education, to be of any assured worth, must continue
throughout life. " Now, Sir, that your education
is ended," exclaims the parent or the guardian to
many a young man whose education, in the highest
sense of the word, is now about to begin. This is
the mistake that we make, too, about the poor.
Reading and writing will not do alone. You might
as well prepare for a liberal hospitality by a good
apparatus for roasting and boiling, but never putting
on any viands, so that the kitchen machinery went
on' grinding unceasingly, with no contentment to
the appetites of the hungry. No : before we shall
be able to make much of education, the highest
amongst us must take larger views of it, and not
suppose that it is a mere definite quantity of culti-
vation, — defined according to the narrow limits of
the fashions of the day.
If we saw this cjearly, we should not be so anx-
ious to succeed at college, at the bar, in parliament,
II
1 62 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
in literature, or in any one art and science. We
should perceive that there was a certain greatfiess
of nature and acquirement to be aimed at, which
we would not sacrifice to any one pursuit, worldly
or artistic.
I stayed no longer on the bridge, but, ascending
from it, made my way to a church which stood on
the height close to the old tower. I marked in the
light of the moon the slight, graceful, fantastic
crosses in iron-work, telling that a peaceful popula-
tion slept beside me ; and I sat down upon a low,
broad stone wall. Thence you might see the wide
waters, and some houses whose shadows lay upon
tlie meads which skirted the waters.
" And that is what all their ambition has come
to," I muttered to myself, turning to the crosses.
"Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens "
(what an epithet!)
"Uxor: neque harum quas coHs, arborum,
Te, praeter invisas cupressus,
Ulla brevem dominum sequetur."
These inevitable common-place remarks mostly
contain the profoundest and the sincerest thought.
Yes, life may be but a poor business at the best ;
nevertheless, said I to myself, I will try to do some-
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 163
thing yet, if life is spared to me. And so, resuming
the subject which I had been working at before I
left home (namely, the great sin of great cities), I
began to consider what I should conclude by saying,
just as if I had been in my study at Worth-Ashton.
My eye wandered over the dark hills, catching
every now and then the glow-worm light which
came from some house or cottage perched up there.
I pictured to myself the daughter of one of thes*e
homes carried off to some great town, soon to be
lost there in its squalid suburbs, like beautiful,
spoilt fruit swept away with garbage into the com-
mon kennel. The girl, perhaps, is much to blame
herself; for we must admit that the fault is not always
on one side, and we must not suffer any sickly senti-
ment to darken truth and justice. Yes — she may be
much to blame ; but, surely, the wiser creature,
man, is more so. Seduction is such a poor transac-
tion. There was a time, it was one of the basest
times the world has ever seen, when seduction was
thought a fine and clever thing ; but now who does
not see that to delude a woman, a creature easily to
be deluded, especially through its affections, is a
slight, unworthy transaction, and but for its dire
consequences, would be ludicrous ; like cheating a
child at cards } But when you add to this that in
164 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
many a case, desertion follows so rapidly upon se-
duction as almost to appear as if they had been
planned together, then the smallness of the transac-
tion is absolutely lost in the consideration of its b^ise-
ness.
However, say what we will, there will often be
seductions ; and it would be a great point gained,
if desertion should be looked upon with greater se-
verity. This brings me at once to the subject of
what are called illegitimate children.
Now, duties are very often very difficult things to
apprehend rightly. As every thing is ultimately re-
ferred to duty, and as a great many things in this
world are very dubious, it is manifest that duties are
often very dubious likewise. There are not only
clear, but dim and shadowy duties, if I may so
express them, which are very perplexing, and occu-
py much of a man's time and thought. Often we
find that what we supposed to be a duty was any
thing but a duty. The great persecutors for opinion
have probably found that out now ; and, indeed, on
earth, we often discover that what we supposed to
be a duty and performed with earnest diligence, was
a great delusion. Under these circumstances, it
does seem to me that when we have before us an
undoubted duty, one of those things which come
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 165
under the axioms of morality, we can hardly lay too
much stress on the performance of that. It is like
what we ought to do in our charities, I think.
Charity is so difficult and perplexed a thing, that
when a man has got hold of a clearly good charity
which he can carry out, he had better do that thor-
oughly than dissipate his resources, mental and
physical, in any efforts of a dubious tendency.
Now, I suppose, there are few things clearer to
the human mind,
" To saint, to savage, and to sage,**
than that a father owes duties to his child. The
dullest savages have seen that. Even Lacedaemon-
ians, if they put off individual fatherhood, only did
so by throwing it upon the community. How can
a man, for a moment, imagine that any difference of
rank (a mere earthly arrangement) between the
mother of his child and himself can absolve him
from paternal duties ? I am lost in astonishment at
the notion. And then imagine a man, performing
all manner of minor duties, neglecting this first one
the while. I always fancy that we may be sur-
rounded by spiritual powers. Now, think what a
horrible mockery it must seem to them, when they
behold, a man going to charity dinners, busying
1 66 COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE.
himself about flannel for the poor, jabbering about
education at public meetings, immersed in different
forms and ceremonies of religion, or raging against
such things, because it is his duty, as he tells you ;
aijd at the door holding a link, or perhaps at that
moment bringing home the produce of small thefts
in a neighboring, narrow alley, is his own child, a
pinched-up, haggard, outcast, cunning-looking little
thing. Throw down, man, the flannel and the soap
and the education and the Popery and Protestant-
ism, and go up that narrow alley and tend your
child : do not heap that palpably unjust burden on
the back of a world which has enough at all times
of its own to bear. If you cannot find your own
child, adopt two others in its place, and let your
care for them be a sort of sin-offering. These are
indignant words, but not more so than is right, I
do believe, and I will not suppress one of them.
I am not ignorant of the difficulty of doing as I
would have a man do in such a case. I do not
write as a hermit or a clergyman, but as a man who
thinks he knows something of the world. To own
to immorality, to have that fair respectability spotted
which we all value so much, and which is valuable,
is no slight effort. A man who would beard a lion
in his den, will shrink from doing what he ought to
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 1 67
do, lest in so doing his neighbors should say un-
pleasant words about him behind his back. And
yet there have been respectable men who have worn
beards and strange hats which their neighbors did
not wear ; a more daring thing, perhaps, than own-
ing to any immorality and endeavoring to repair it.
There are men who have secretly supported the
burden of an illegitimate family : these at least are
far better men than those who have joined the ^Y0^1d
in ignoring the existence of those they were bound
to know of and to succor. Great kings, who can
afford to set aside conventionality, before whom
" nice custom curtseys," have boldly taken charge
of their illegitimate children, and the world has not
thought the worse of them for that, whatever it may
justly have thought of the rest of their proceedings.
Some may reply, all this acknowledgment is
encouragement. I say not. I say it holds before a
person those duties, the general forgetfulness of
which encourages to immorality. But, really, fine
questions of general morality ought to be of second-
rate importance to a man who is neglecting his first
duties.
Is it not so ? I said, looking round upon the thin
shadows cast by the crosses over the graves. Silent
population (any one of whom, the meanest, could
1 68 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
now tell us more, mayhap, than all the wise men
and doctors of this earth), silent population, is it
not so ? But none answered, unless a sigh of the
breeze which now stole over the churchyard was
the expression of tine of those subtle chords of sym-
pathy, rarely heard, still more rarely appreciated,
which, perhaps, bring animate, and what we call
inanimate, nature into secret, strange communion.
I went down again upon the bridge, looked up at
the solemn sky, for the moon was clouded now, and
beneath me at the dim waters, being able to discern
naught else : and still with some regard to what I
had been thinking of in the churchyard, hoped that,
in a future state at least, we might have some oppor-
tunity of loving and making our peace with those
whom we have wronged here, and of seeing that
our wrong, overruled by infinite goodness, has not
wrought all the injury which there was in it to do.
So I walked on, having those dim apprehensions
and undefined feelings which are yet, perhaps, the
unfashioned substance of our sincerest and most
exact afterthought, until darkness and the cold and
the thought of to-morrow's journey drove me home-
ward, — the home so emblematical for man in his
pilgrimage, — the home of an inn.
CHAPTER X.
OO varied, extensive, and pervading are human
^^^^ distresses, sorrows, shortcomings, miseries,
and misadventures, that a chapter of aid or consola-
tion never comes amiss, I think. There is a pitiless,
pelting rain this morning ; heavily against my study
windows drives the south-western gale ; and alto-
gether it is a very fit day for working at such a chap-
ter. The in-door comforts which enable one to
resist with composure, nay even to welcome, this
outward conflict and hubbub, are like the plans and
resources provided by philosophy and religion, to
meet the various calamities driven against the soul
in its passage through this stormy world. The
books which surround me have been found an equal
resource in both respects, both against the weather
from without and from within, against physical and
mental storms : and, if it might be so, I would pass
on to others the comfort which a seasonable word
has often brought to me.
If I were to look round these shelves, what a host
of well-loved names would rise up, as those who
170 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
have said brave or wise words to comfort and aid
their brethren in adversity. It seems as if h'ttle
remained to be said ; but in truth there is always
waste land in the human heart to be tilled.
The first thing which occurs to me is, that in
bearing misfortune and vexation, as in overcoming
temptation, there is a certain confidence which had
better be put aside. This confidence sometimes
results from a faith in reason, or rather a faith in our
being exactly amenable to reason. For instance, it
is some time before a man ceases to have a full
belief in his own powers of accomplishing by direct
means the absolute rule in his mind. If he is con-
vinced of a thing, he says to himself, of course he
will act accordingly. It astonishes him to hear of
men — great men — who could not overcome, or
found the greatest difficulty in overcoming, some
small habit. Indeed, according to his brave imagin-
ings, he intends always to overcome terrors and
temptations, not merely to avoid them. Such is a
very juvenile though a very natural mode of think-
ing. It requires a good many fallings in the mire,
before a man finds that his own mind, temperament,
and faculties, are things which will give him as
much or more trouble to manage, than his affairs,
or his family, or than the whole world besides.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. l*Jl
But as a man learns certain rules of health, so that
it is said that at forty he is either a fool or a physician,
so again, in dealing with the affections of the mind,
there comes a skill which is not to be despised : and
a man finds that the evil he cannot master he can
ignore, the care he cannot efface he can elude, the
felicity he cannot accomplish he can weigh and
understand, and so reduce it from the size it would
occupy in his imagination to its proper and reason-
able limits. At last even sensitive people learn to
suffer less from sensitiveness ; not that it grows dull
by age, but that they learn to manage it better.
As a sound preparation for consolation of various
kinds, I would begin, not by wilfully magnifying
evils, but by showing their true proportions, which
no doubt makes them seem larger than the imagi-
nation of the young, mistaught by many unsound
fictions, pictures them to be. But nothing can be
better than the truth. In its hand are all earthly
and all heavenly consolations. As an instance of
what I mean, there is a common fancy that an
untoward event generally comes and goes with con-
siderable rapidity, — and there an end ; whereas it
is very often a long-continued process. You do not
fall sheer down a precipice, but go tumbling by
degrees, drinking in the full measure of danger and
172 COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE.
horror, catching at bushes here and there, now
imagining for a moment that you have found secur-
ity on some projecting ledge, and then finding the
ground crumbling under you ; and so you fall on-
wards till you reach the lowest level. The above is
rather a strong image, but it may convey what I in-
tend.
To illusti*ate it in practice — most men who have
lived any time in the world, unless they have been
the very minions of fortune (in which case, by the
way, they are not much to be envied), have vexations
of considerable standing — long lawsuits, disastrous
adventures, an ill-conducted child, or some other
terrible relative, a deplorable shame, often such a
mingled tissue of fault and misfortune, that they
cannot pity themselves sufficiently for blame at their
folly ; and they return from thinking over the folly
to grieving over the ill-luck (as they call it) which
brought out the folly so remarkably on that particular
occasion.
Such a course of things requiring time for its
development, can hardly fail to exercise in vexation
all the moods and faculties of a man. A statesman
does not perhaps work, intellectually speaking,
harder than a lawyer in great practice ; but the
cares of the latter are cares which begin and end
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 173
with the day ; not long lines of policy which require
time and protracted care on one subject to work out,
and where failure often comes by slow degrees.
Now, then, for the attempt at aid or consolation
in such a case. Suppose the course of events I have
spoken of to be one of failure and vexation — real-
ized, or about to be so, to use an American phrase,
and a very good one. A wise man (but that word
" wise " is hardly a fit adjective to put before " man,"
it would be better to say, a man well-read in the
heart) sees when he has suffered enough from these
lengthened trains of evils, when he has exhausted
the instruction from them ; and though from time
to time he may revert to them, as new views or new
circumstances occur, enabling him to look down
from a fresh height, as it were, on these long, dreary,
disastrous passages of his life, yet he resolves sub-
stantially to have done with them ; and when he
finds them invading his mind and memory, adroitly
he contrives at once to occupy it with something
else.
With his wisdom of this world. Napoleon, no
doubt, took care not to let his Russian campaign
press fatally upon his recollections.
Another way for a man in such a case is to quote
these disasters fearlessly to himself, and sometimes
174 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
to others, as dear-bought bits of experience, now
possessions ; bought, it is true, at a most extravagant
price, but still a little property, far better than
nothing.
There is great humility in such plans as the above :
the man who adopts them has found out, or at least
he thoroughly suspects, his own weakness, and is
willing to avail himself of any fair advantage to fight
with the numerous enemies that surround him.
Like a wise commander, he looks about for the
slightest rising ground.
The same adroitness and practical wisdom may
be manifested, not only in thought but in action. A
friend of mine who had to attend a series of inter-
views, in which business was discussed of much
vexation to him, and where he had to undergo,
justly, much contumely, discovered that the occasions
when he gave way to temper and behaved unwisely,
were those in which he rode on a tiresome horse to
the place of business. This is very natural : his
nerves were a little ruffled in managing the unruly
quadruped ; his powers a little impaired ; his com-
posure slightly broken through to begin with : and,
where things are nicely balanced, this slight dis-
turbance of equanimity might turn the scale. After-
wards he took care to go to tlie place of tliese
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 175
interviews always in the easiest manner, and noted
the good effect of tliis change. How trivial such an
anecdote will seem, except to those who know the
world well, and have seen how important small
things may be when they happen to be brought into
tlie same narrow compass of affairs with great ones.
But now, to pass to other subjects of human dis-
tress, and first among them, to all that is suffered
from obloquy.
In bearing obloquy it may be noted, byway of conso-
lation, that the world is always correcting its opinions ;
that — except amongst your particular friends and re-
lations, who have, perhaps, taken up a most erroneous
view of your character, and, in the pride of a little
knowledge, will never let it go — the general body of
opinion is very fluent, and, at last, every thing has a
hearing. I have a private suspicion of my own, that
some of those Roman emperors we read of have been
maligned a little. Somebody else perhaps has the
same notion ; if it is a just one it will yet be inves-
tigated, and what there is true in it be sifted out.
It is certainly a long time to wait, for ages, to
have an unjust opinion of you corrected ; but if fame
is worth any thing at all, then there is a consolation
in thinking that eventually you have a chance of
being fairly dealt with.
176 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
By way of comfort in bearing calumny, it maybe
observed that calumny does not originate in the way
ordinarily supposed ; that there is rarely any such
thing as a system of active, well-regulated, well-aimed
calumny, arising out of malice prepense ; but that far
more often it has its source in honest ignorance,
mean-mindedness, or absolute mistake. It is to be
viewed, therefore, in the light of a misfortune, rather
than in that of a persecution.
Any man of many transactions can hardly expect
to go through life without being subject to one or two
very severe calumnies. Amongst these many trans-
actions, some few will be with very ill-conditioned
people, with very ignorant people, or perhaps with
monomaniacs (and much less account is taken of them
than ought to be), and he cannot expect, therefore,
but that some narrative of a calumnious kind will
have its origin in one of these transactions. It may
then be fanned by any accidental breeze of malice
or ill-fortune, and become a very serious element of
mischief to him. Such a thing is to be looked upon
as pure misfortune coming in the ordinary course of
events ; and the way of treating it is to deal with it
as calmly and philosophically as with any other mis-
fortune. As some one has said, the mud will rub off
when it is dry, and not before. The drying will not
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 1 77
always come in the calumniated man's time, unless
in favorable seasons, which he cannot command. It
is not wise, however, to be very impatient to justify
one's self; and, altogether, too much stress should
not be laid upon calumny by the calumniated, else
their serious work will be for ever interrupted ; and
they should remember that it is not so much their
business to explain to others all they do, as to be
sure that it will bear explanation and satisfy them-
selves.
When I was in the habit of seeing something of
official life, I used to wonder that a great department
suffered itself to be calumniated, and made no sign ;
but older and wiser heads than mine soon convinced
me that their business did not admit of their con-
futing every idle and erroneous statement that was
made about them, and that they were mainly to
answer to those persons who had authority to ques-
tion them. The same judicious maxim applies also
to private life.
Not far removed from calumny, and often leading
up to it, is injurious comment on people's conduct ;
which when addressed or repeated to them, or im-
agined by them, is apt to vex them sorely. But
really if it were considered how utterly incompetent
178 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
men are to talk of the conduct of others, as they do,
the talkers would often be silenced at once, and the
sufferers as readily consoled. In the -first place how
imperfect is our knowledge of our neighbor's circum-
stances. You suppose a man rich, and he is poor ;
or rich, but with perils, claims, and responsibilities
of which you know nothing ; you suppose him
healthy, and he is tortured by some internal disease ;
you suppose him unhappy in his domestic relations,
and he is most felicitous ; or, on the other hand, you
suppose him lapped in the loving regards of his
family, and all the while he has a wretched, con-
tentious home ; you suppose him a man of leisure,
and he is cumbered with cares, duties, labors, and
endeavors, of which you have not the slightest con-
ception — what is your comment on this man's con-
duct worth ? Then if we observe the difference of
men's natures, and consider the want of imagination
in most men which confines them to the just appre-
ciation of those natures only which are like their
own, how much this complicates the question. Prob-
ably the difference of temperament amongst men is
as great as that amongst the different species of ani-
mals — as between that, for instance, of the lively
squirrel and the solemn crane. Now, if only from
this difference between them, the squirrel would be
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 179
a bad judge of the felicity, or generosity, or the do-
mestic conduct, of the crane.
Probably when we are thinking or talking of a
person, we recall some visual image of that person.
I have thought what an instructive thing it would
be, if under some magic influence, like that, for ex-
ample, which would construct a " palace of truth,"
it were arranged that as we gave out our comments
on the character or conduct of any person, this image
on the retina of memory should change according to
the truth, or rather the want of it, in our remarks.
Gradually, feature after feature would steal away till
we gazed at nonentity ; or we should find another
image glide into the field of view, somebody we had
never seen perhaps, but to whom the comments we
were uttering really did apply.
Now, the sufferers from injurious and unjust com-
ment might treat the whole thing as one which lacked
reality. The blame itself is often good enough, well-
compacted, forcible, having an appearance of justice
— but withal no foundation in real circumstances, so
that it is only good, if you may say so, in a literary
sense, as good fiction, but having no ground-work in
real life. How little ought a thoughtful man to be
long vexed at such stuff', immaterial in every sense.
Besides, none of the great teachers have taught us,
I So COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
that to be reviled is any signal misfortune ; and there
has been one, the greatest, who has pronounced it to
be fraught with blessing.
In bearing neglect, the next evil to calumny, and a
sort of disengaged shadow of it, many aids may be
given to those who will be content to take them.
No doubt neglect is hard to bear for one who feels
that he ought not to be neglected. But where this is
justly felt, the neglect may generally be traced up to
some source which is not, necessarily, a painful one.
A man will not condescend to use certain means, and
yet would have what those means alone, or best, can
give him ; or he insists, in his mental cogitations,
upon possessing that which could hardly be got ex-
cept with the aid of certain advantages joined to
merit, which advantages, whether wisely or not,
Nature or Fortune has denied him. Having one
stout friend (as Bacon, before quoted, has noticed),
what will it not do for a man ? There are certain
things he cannot say for .himself. If he says them,
they turn into shame, vain-glory, and mischief, in-
stead of aid and honor to him. Well, he has no friend
to back him at the right time, how can he get those
advantages which such a friend could gracefully ob-
tain for him ? Frequently, perhaps most frequently,
the friend in question comes forward in the shape of
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. i8l
a relation who has a direct interest in the fortunes of
the man he puts forward. This is called having good
connections. Any neglected man of merit ought not
to suffer himself to be quite disheartened because he
was not born with such relations. Neither were the
poor men who dig in the fields.
But neglect is only one phase of what man hates
more, and suffers more from, than almost any thing
else — namely, injustice. His sensitiveness in this
respect is very remarkable. A little wrong out-
weighs a great injury. Indeed, the things are not to
be weighed in the same scales, are practically in-
commensurable. The sea invades a man's estate, and
retires carrying away land and crops, leaving »and
where there was alluvial soil : it is a misfortune ;
and he has a dull sense of sorrow and vexation if the
loss is one of magnitude. But the poor blind ele-
ments meant no harm, or if he thinks they were
guided, he knows it was by One whose chastisements
must be blessings.
Again, suppose him to have spent much money in
riotous living. Well, he thinks of this with shame,
especially when some good comes in his way to do,
and he sees what he might have done with the
squandered resources. Still there was something for
his monev. He was not cheated ; he was mistaken.
l82 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
But observe the same man on looking oyer a bill
of costs : where often, for many items together, it is
only wrong-doing requiring to be paid, and he feels
that when he pays it, he is helping to support a
vicious system of things. It is not well to be of his
family circle on the day when he settles those ac-
counts, unless he is one of those rare and generous
creatures who do not mitigate their own misfortunes
by unkindness to those with whom they live. No
liberality of nature will suffice to soothe his mind.
It is not a question of liberality. The same man
who, with Luther, would say to his wife, " Why
did we not give the silver cup to that poor man as
we had no money } " will haggle over an unjust or
unsatisfactory payment from morning till night.
But it is a question of wisdom and experience : for
a wise and well-informed man will see what must
almost inevitably be the evil results of the particular
form of laws he lives under (for codes are the doings
of very imperfect creatures with a limited range of
circumstances before them), and he does not expect
to go into the most vexed and troublous part of
human affairs, and come out with smooth coun-
tenance and unruffled garments. Neither will such
a man be disposed to imagine that he is worse otf
than others, or has worse people to deal with.
COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE. 1S3
And tbe same thing is to be said Of injustice
generally. You often hear a man making the some-
what simple complaint, that he only wants justice.
Only justice ! why justice requires time, insight, and
goodness : and you demand this in each case of the
many hundreds that occur to you in the course of a
year in which your fellow-beings have some dealings
with you. No — justice ! look not for it till you are
in a state of being for which you will hardly say
that you are yet quite fit. In truth, the considera-
tion of what a world of misunderstanding, haste,
blindness, passion, indolence, and private interest
we are in the thick of (perhaps the beauty of it as a
world of trial) would go some little way to cure a
man from vexing the depths of his soul, because he
suffers from extortion, misrepresentation, neglect, or
injustice of any kind. He is on earth : and men
are unjust to him. How ludicrous the complaint !
Perhaps the wrongs- we endure from unjust treat-
ment would be easier to bear, if our notions of jus-
tice were modified a little. For my part, instead of
picturing her, sword in hand, apparently engaged in
blindly weighing out small groceries — a figure that
would better denote the goddess Fortune as it seems
to me — I imagine Justice travelling swiftly round
184 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
about the earth, diffusing a mild effluence of light
like that of a polar night, but followed not by her
own attendants, but by the ungainly shadows of all
evil tilings, envy and prejudice, indolence and self-
ishness, her enemies ; and these shadows lay them-
selves down before her in their malice, and love to
intercept her light. The aspect of a good man
scares them partially away, and then her light lies
in great broad spaces on the mead : with most of
us, it is chequered like the sunshine under trees ; and
there are poor creatures in whose presence all the
evil shadows descend, leaving but a streak of light
here and a spot there, where the hideous shadows
do not quite fit in together. Happily, however, all
these shadows are mortal, and as they die away, dark
miserable places come into light and life again, and
truth returns to them as her abodes for ever.
Descending from these flights about justice to the
more prosaic parts of the subject, I may notice, that
mean misfortunes are often the most difficult to bear.
There is no instrument of philosophy small enough
to take them up and deal with them. A long career
of small anxieties is also very hard to bear.
One thing which often maintains these vexations
in full force, is the shame of owning to our want of
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 185
wisdom in the first instance. A man, playing in
imagination his part in life, always, like the story-
books, makes his hero successful in the end ; and,
therefore, in real life, he is immensely disturbed and
humiliated at finding that such is the devilry of cir-
cumstances, that if he only gives a little inlet to
mischance by folly or incautiousness of any kind, he
is sometimes invaded by a flood of evil.
He bears this in secret, struggling with all his might
and eating his own heart, as it were, rather than own
to the folly he committed at first. Nothing less will
satisfy him than to retrieve the whole misfortune, and
cancel by success his first error. Thus we come to
one more instance of the truth that Pride applies the
scourge more frequently and with far heavier hand
than Penitence ; with the hand, in fact, of another.
As regards the " career of small anxieties," which I
spoke of above, one great art of managing with them,
is to cease thinking about them just at that point
where thought becomes morbid. It will not do to say
that such anxieties may not demand some thought,
and, occasionally, much thought. But there comes
a time when thought is wasted upon these anxieties ;
when you find yourself in your thoughts going over
the same ground again and again to no purpose,
deepening annoyance instead of enlarging insight
l86 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
and providing remedy. Then the thing would be
to be able to epeak to these fretting little cares,
like Lord Burleigh to his gown of state, when
he took it off for the night, " Lie there, Lord Treas-
urer."
It must be remembered though that his cares,
assured as he was of his mistress's favor, were for
the most part mere business cares, and did not
exactly correspond with the small anxieties which I
was speaking of. These are very hard, I suspect,
to dismiss. Perhaps the best way of getting rid of
them is not to attempt too much at once, but at
least to change the cares, so as not to let one set
prey upon the mind and make it become morbid —
just as Newton, unable to go abruptly from his
high, absorbing tlioughts to what most men would
consider recreation, merely adopted a change of
study, and found his relief therein.
There is often a very keen annoyance suffered by
sensitive and high-minded people, arising from dis-
satisfaction with their own work. • I should be very
sorry to say any thing that would seem like encour-
agement to slight or unconscientious working, but
to the anxious, truth-seeking, high-minded, fastidi-
ous man, I would sometimes venture to say, " My
good friend, if we could work out our ideal, we
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. iby
should be angels. There is eternity to do it in.
But now come down from your pedestal, and do not
overfret yourself, because your hand, or your mind,
or your soul, will not fulfil all that you would have
it. There have been men before you, and probably
will come others after you, whose deeds, however
much approved of by the general voice, seemed, or
will seem, to the men themselves little better than a
caricature of their aspirations."
How much, by the way, accomplishments of
various kinds would come in to help men to get rid
of over-riding small cares and petty anxieties.
These accomplishments mostly appeal to another
world of thought and feeling than that in which the
little troubles were bred. The studious, the busy,
and the sorrowful might find in art a change of
thought which nothing else, at least of worldly
things, could give them. And the accomplishments
I mean would be of use on occasions when there is
no need, and where it is scarcely fitting, to summon
forth the solemn afd of religion or philosophy. Not
that I would have such aid far distant from any
mind, or on any occasion : for there is a comfort
and a sobriety of mind to be gained from the great
topics of consolation which nothing else can surely
give.
1 88 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
In considering various forms of unhappiness,
which has been the business of this chapter, for the
purpose of providing some small aids and consola-
tions, one form has occurred to me which is not
uncommon, I imagine.
It is where an almost infinite regret enters tlvj
mind at some happiness having been missed which
in imagination seems the one, possible, present good
to the person indulging the imagination ; and the
men or women in this sad case go on all their days
mourning or fretting for want of that imagined
felicity. This must often occur in the midst of great
seeming prosperity, which deepens the vexation,
and gives an air of especial mockery to it.
To find consolation for this state of mind may not
be easy; still there are medicaments even for it.
Imagine the happiness in question gained, fond
dreamer ; do you not already see some diminution
of the happiness itself, — it will only be from lack
of imagination if you do not, — but at any rate do
you not at least perceive how many fears such
happiness would throw you open to ? " Ali, Da-
vy," said Johnson to Garrick, after going over his
new house and looking at the fine things there,
" these are the things that make a death-bed ter-
rible."
COMPANIONS OF M7 SOLITUDE. 189
Every felicity, indeed, as well as wife and chil-
dren, is a hostage to Fortune.
Lastly, there is to be said of all suffering that it is
experience. I have forgotten in whose life it is to
be found, but there is some man who went out of
his way to provide himself with every form of
human misery which he' could get at. I do not,
myself, see any occasion for any man's going out of
the way to provide misfortune for himself. Like an
eminent physician he might stay at home, and find
almost every form of human misery knocking at his
door. But still I understand what this chivalrous
inquirer meant, who sought to taste all suffering for
the sake of the experience it would give him.
There is this admirable common-place, too,
which, from long habit of being introduced in such
discourses, wishes to come in before I conclude ;
namely, that infelicities of various kinds belong to
the state here below. Who are we that we should
not take our share ? See the slight amount of per-
sonal happiness requisite to go on with. In noisome
dungeons, subject to studied tortures, in abject and
shifty poverty, after consummate shame, upon tre-
mendous change of fortune, in the profoundest des-
olation of mind and soul, in forced companionship
with all that is unlovely and uncongenial, men,
190 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
persevering nobly, live on and live through it all.
The mind, like water, as described in that beautiful
passage in Metastasio which I will transcribe below,
passes through all states, till it shall be united to
what it is ever seeking. The very loneliness of
man here is the greatest proof, to my mind, of a God.
"L'onda dal mar divisa
Bagna la valle e'l monte;
Va passeggiera
In fiume,
Va prigioniera
In fonte,
Mormora sempre e geme,
Fin che non torna al mar;
Al mar dov' ella nacque,
Dove acquistb gli umori,
Dove da' lunghi errori
Spera di riposar."
Such were my thoughts this wet day, which I
had made up my mind was to be a dreary day
throughout ; but I had hardly come to the end of
what I had to say, when (may it be a good omen
that the chapter itself may bring some cheer to
some one in distress), the sun peeped out, the drops
of rain upon the leaves glistened in the sunshine
like afflictions beautified by heavenly thoughts, and
all nature invited me out to enjoy the gladness of
her aspect, more glad by contrast with her forme)
friendly gloom.
CHAPTER XL
nr^HE sun came out brilliantly tliis morning. To
be sure, there was a chilliness in the air ; but
if you walked about with vigor, and said it was a
charming morning, it gradually became so. An
eccentric friend of mine, of the Johnsonian school,
maintains that all kinds of weather may be treated
in a similar manner, and says, that if a man will go
out in the rain without any defence and pretend to
know nothing about the showers, the rain will cease
for him, each drop exclaiming, " It is no use rain-
ing upon that man, he does not mind it." Whether
my friend has a moral meaning to this fable of his,
I do not know ; and, indeed, it is difficult to sound
the depths of some men's humor, the deepest part
of their nature.
• As I walked up and down under the shelter of a
wall, so that I might have the full benefit of the sun's
rays, I could not help thinking that the sun had
been very little worshipped by idolaters. In fact,
he is too manifest a benefactor to be much idolized.
192 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
Moreover, what the natural man likes to worship,
is some ugly little idol, an incarnation of one or
other of. his own bad passions. I suppose the real
explanation is, that the form of the sun being a sim-
ple one, essentially belonging to the inanimate world,
provoked no desire to worship, and left no room for
sufficient mystery. So, after all, it is perhaps a
proof of the craving imagination of mankind that
the sun has had, comparatively speaking, but few
worshippers, while an ungainly stone, or a thing
with many hands and legs, has enjoyed the tenderest
adoration.
Then I thought if our senses were finer, what an
exquisite sight it would be, to behold all the inani-
mate world turning gently to the sun each day ; a
fact which we only perceive in the results of such
fond looks for many years, as exhibited in the growth
of trees : whereas, if our senses were more delicately
apprehensive, we might see every leaf, bud, and twig
making its little way towards the light, and all na-
ture, like one sunflower, bending slightly forwards
in a supplicating attitude" to the sun.
Warming with the subject I exclaimed, this is quite
an Italian sky — rather home-made, was the disparag-
ing second thought. In such a mood it was very nat-
ural to think of foreign travel. I looked at the fig-trees
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 197
against the wall, and felt that they must be rather
disgusted at the climate which needed such a posi-
tion for them. However, said I, it is only what the
greatest men have had to endure, to live in an un-
congenial clime and to bring forth fruit with painful
culture and under most adverse circumstances ; so
you must not complain, though you are nailed up
against the wall. On went my mind to a particular
fig-tree near Cordova, from thence down the Guadal-
quiver ; when I saw again the beautiful birds come
out of the sandy banks of the river ; and, in truth,
I was in a full career of travel, when it occurred to
me that I had often thought many things about trav-
elling, and that it might be useful to put them to-
gether. So, walking up and down, like a peripatetic
philosopher, only with no disciples (which, by the
way, is a safer thing for the discovery of truth), I
put into some order the following remarks on travel.
A journey has often been compared to a life. I
suppose that in any comparison so frequently used
there must be some aptitude ; but it does not strike
me. Any one day is like a life, is indeed an epitome
of it : morning, noon, evening, awaking and going to
sleep, have all the closest analogy with the progress
of a life. But a journey is often very dissimilar to a
»3
194 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
life. In travelling, for instance, for pleasure, you go
out with much hope of delight : the delight is partly
realized ; but there is much that is untoward, and
which, at the time, prevents a thorough enjoyment
and appreciation of what you do see. You return
with joy, and the journey is afterwards stored up in
the memory as a complete pleasure ; all the mishaps
being put into, what the Dutch call "the forget
book," or only remembered as interesting incidents.
Clearly, one of the main delights is in the recollec-
tion. Now, we cannot venture to say whether that
will be the case with the journey of life. There
does not appear much promise of that.
I took a turn up and down the garden, and
thought over that last suggestion, which is a very
serious one. Soon, however, I returned to the sub-
ject of travelling.
Yes, I said to myself, certainly there is great
pleasure in coming back after a tour (which, by the
way, may be another great difference between these
journeys and the journey of life), at least I know I
am always glad to come back to that great, silent,
unexpectorating people to whom I belong; upon
whose dominions the sun never sets, who are very
powerful and somewhat dull, free as far as consti-
tutions and forms of government go, but as slavish
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 195
as any other nation to the great tyrants, custom and
public opinion : a people, indeed, who do not enjoy
any exuberant felicity, but who have humor enough
to see their faults and shortcomings, which is some
alleviation.
But to descend more to particulars about travel-
ling. The first thing is in the preparation for it ;
the mental preparation, I mean. In this preparation
lies some of the greatest utility and of tlie greatest
pleasure connected with travelling. And without
this preparation what a small thing travel would be.
What is it to see some tomb, when the name of the
inmate is merely a pompous sound, — the name of
an unknown king, duke, or emperor, — compared
with what it is to see the tomb of one whose for-
tunes you have studied, who is a favorite with you,
who represents yourself or what you would be,
whose very name makes your blood stir.? The
same thing, of course, applies in travel, to knowl-
edge of the arts, sciences, and manufactures.
Knowledge is the best excitement and the truest
reward for travel — at once the means and the end.
A dignified and intelligent curiosity, how much it
differs f*-om mere inane lion-hunting; where the
ignorant traveller gapes at wonders which the glides
know far more about than he does.
196 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
With regard to the mode of travelling, it is curi-
ous to compare the ancient with the modern ; the
free yet stately way of the former, the methodized
yet undignified way of the latter. Imagine a travel-
ler in former days setting off from the ancestral
mansion leisurely, on horseback. Within ten miles
there might be an adventure ; and throughout the
journey, which had not been much cleared up by
the accounts of former travellers, there must have
been a constant feeling of doubt as to what was to
happen next, and a consequent excitement a little
like the feeling of a great discoverer in unknown
lands seeking after the kingdom of Prester John,
the El Dorado, or the fountain of perpetual youth ;
and not being certain any day that he might not
come upon one of these wonders.
I think it is possible to combine, occasionally, the
advantages of modern and ancient travelling, espe-
cially for the vigorous and healthy.
In the plans and modes of travelling, the question
of companionship comes first. And, by the way,
what a hint it might give many a young man of the
difficulties to be conquered in domestic companion-
ship, when he finds how hard it is to agree with his
fellows in travel for a few short weeks. All the
difficulties attendant upon companionship occur in
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 197
•*
this case of travelling. Indeed, the first question
is, whether you should journey alone, solitary and
unmolested ; or with one other, when the want of
profound sympathy and the wish to quarrel will be
very painful ; or with two or three, when the quar-
relling can better break out and the companions
separate into factions. The advantages and disad-
vantages are so nearly equivalent that the traveller
will probably condemn and regret whichever course
he takes, and, therefore, may take any one without
much concern. To the very serious reader I may
mention that the above description is not given
quite in earnest, but it points to what are some of
the prominent dangers of companionship. Really
it is disgraceful that men are so ill-taught and unpre-
pared for social life as they are, often turning their
best energies, their acquisitions, and their special
advantages into means of annoyance to those with
whom they live. Some day it will be found out
that to bring up a man with a genial nature, a good
temper, and a happy form of mind, is a greater
effort than to perfect him in much knowledge and
many accomplishments. Then we might have that
tolerance of other people's pursuits, that absence of
disputatiousness, and that freedom from small fussi-
ness, which would render a companion a certain
iq8 companions of my solitude,
•gain. It will not be desirable, however, to wait till
tliat period before we begin our travels.
The advantages of travel are very various and
very numerous. I have already put the knowledge
to be gained as one of them. But this is for the
young and the unworn. A far greater advantage is
in the repose of mind which travelling often gives,*
where nothing else could. It seems rather hard
though, that all our boasted philosophy cannot do
what a little change of place so easily effects. It is
by no magical property, however, that travelling
does this. It is merely that by this change things
assume their right proportions. The nightmares
of care and trouble cease to weigh as if they were
the only things of weight in the world.
I know one who finds somewhat of the same ad-
vantage in looking at the stars. He says it suggests
a welcome change of country. Indeed, he main-
tains that the aspect of these glorious worlds might
somewhat comfort a man even under remorse.
Again a man's own land is a serious place to him,
or at least has a possible seriousness about it, which
is like a cloud that may at any moment come over
the spot he is occupying.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 199
There he has known the sweetness and the bit-
terness of early loves, early friendships. There,
mayhap, he has suffered one of those vast bereave-
ments which was like a tearing away of a part of
his own soul ; when he thought each noise in the
house, hearing noises that he never heard before,
must be something they were doing in the room —
the room — where lay all that was mortal of some
one inexpressibly dear to him ; when he awoke
morning after morning to struggle with a grief which
seemed as new, as appalling, and as large as on the
first day ; which, indeed, being part of himself and
thus partaking of his renovated powers, rose equipped
with what rest, or alacrity, sleep had given him ;
and sank, unconquered, only when he was too
wearied in body and mind to attend to it, or to any
thing.
The places where he has felt such sorrows may
be the dearest in the world to him, may be sure to
win him back to them ; but they cannot always be
regarded in that easy, disengaged way which is ne-
cessary for perfect recreation.
This, then, is one of the advantages of travel,
that we come upon new ground, which we tread
lightly, which is free from 'associations that claim
too deep and constant an interest from us ; and, not
200 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
resting long in any one place, but travelling on-
wards, we maintain that desirable lightness of
mind : we are spectators, having for the time no
duties, no ties, no associations, no responsibilities ;
nothing to do but to look on, and look fairly.
Another of the great advantages of travel lies in
what you learn from your companions : not merely
from those you set out with, or so much from them,
as from those whom you are thrown together with
on the journey. I reckon this advantage to be so
great, that I should be inclined to say, that you often
get more from your companions in travel than from
all you come to see.
People imagine they are not known, and that they
shall never meet again with the same company
(which is very likely so) ; they are free for the time
from the trammels of their business, profession, or
calling ; the marks of the harness begin to wear
out ; and altogether they talk more like men than
slaves with their several functions hanging like col-
lars round their necks. An ordinary man on travel
will sometimes talk like a great imaginative man at
home, for such are never utterly enslaved by their
functions.
Then the diversities of character you meet with
instruct and delight you. The variety in language,
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 20I
dress, behavior, religious ceremonies, mode of life,
amusement, arts, climate, government, lays hold of
your attention and takes you out of the vs^heel-tracks
of your every-day cares. He must, indeed, be either
an angel of constancy and perseverance, or a won-
derfully obtuse Caliban of a man, who, amidst all
this change, can maintain his private griefs or vex-
ations exactly in the same place they held in his
heart while he was packing for his journey.
The change of language is alone a great delight.
You pass along, living only with gentlemen and
scholars, for you rarely detect what is vulgar, or
inept, in the talk around you. Children's talk in
another language is not childish to you ; and, indeed,
every thing is literature, from the announcement at
a railway station to the advertisements in a news-
paper. Read the Bible in another tongue ; and you
will perhaps find a beauty in it you have not thor-
oughly appreciated for years before.
As regards the enjoyments of travel, I should be
sorry to say any thing pedantic about them. They
must vary so much according to the nature of the
individual. In my view, they are to be found in the
chance delights rather than in the official part of
travelling I go through a picture-gallery, enjoying
202 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
with instructed and well-regulated satisfaction all
the things I ought to enjoy. Down in the recesses
of my mind, not communicated perhaps to any of
my companions, is a secret hope that the room I see
in the distance is really the last in the building, and
that I shall have to go through no more. *It is a
warm day, and, stepping out upon a balcony for a
moment, I see a young girl carefully helping her in-
firm mother out of church, and playfully insisting on
carrying the market burdens pf both, far too heavy
for her little self. I watch the pair to the corner of
the street, and then turn back to see the pictures
which must be seen. But' the pictures will fade
from my memory sooner than this little scene which
I saw from the balcony. I have put that by for my
private gallery. Doubtless, we need not leave our
own country to see much that is most beautiful in
nature and in conduct; but we are often far too
much engaged, and too unobservant, to see it.
Then there is the new climate. How exquisite
the mere sensation of warmth is to many persons !
Then there is the stroll in the market-place, or the
sight of the harbor, or the procession, or the guard-
house — in short, the aspect of all those ordinary,
but, in a strange country, unfamiliar things which,
happily, no hand-book need dilate upon, or even
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 203
point out, but which men are perverse enough to
like all the better for that.
The benefits which arise from making the inhab-
itants of different nations acquainted with one an-
other may be considerable. How many things there
are to be learnt on both sides ; and how slow men
are in copying the good from each other. An evil
custom or a dubious one, or a disease, mental, moral,
or physical, how rapidly it spreads over the earth !
Evil is winged. How slowly any contrivance for
cleanliness, or decorum, or good order, makes its
way. If it were not that good by its nature is en-
during, and evil by its nature transitory, there would
be but little chance for the welfare of the world.
In contemplating different nations, the traveller
learns that their differences are very great, and yet
how small when compared with their resemblances.
That intensity of dislike wliich arises at these small
differences, and which even the most philosophical
minds are apt at times to feel, is a great proof of the
tyrannous nature of the human heart, which would
have every other creature cut out exactly after its
own pattern.
One of the things to be most noted by an English-
man in travelling, is the remarkable difference, as
204 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
it seems to me, between our own and other nations
in the amusements of the people. We are the peo-
ple who have sent out our efforts to the uttermost
parts of the earth, and yet a great deal of our own
life at home is very barren and uncultivated. When
I have been watching the gamesomeness of other
peeple, it has often saddened me to think of the pov-
erty of resources in my own country in that way.
Shows alone will not do. Pictures are good in their
way, but what is wanted is something in which peo-
ple themselves are engaged. Indeed, more persons
are amused, and rightly so, in playing at bowls than
in looking at Raphaels, Murillos, or Titians. Those
who are most amused, if one may use such a word,
in contemplating these great works, are those in
whom the works produce a secret feeling of power
to create the like — I do not say, like pictures or even
like works of art, but something great, if only great
destruction — in fact, where the works elicit the sym-
pathy of kindred genius. But for the amusements
of the people, something on a very broad and gen-
eral basis must be sought for.
Returning, however, to the special subject of trav-
elling, which I am now considering, it is worth no-
tice that there is no occasion for being excessively
emulous, or haste-bitten, in travelling any more than
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 205
in other occupations of life. Let no truly observant
man feel the least envious, or disconcerted, when he
hears others talk familiarly of cities w^hich are dream-
land to him, the names of which are poetry in his
mind. Many of these men never have seen, and
never can see any thing, as he can see it. The wise
do not hurry without good reason. A judicious trav-
eller tells me that he once went to see one of the
greatest wonders of the world. He gazed and gazed,
each minute saw more, and might have gone on see-
ing into the thing for weeks, he said. Two regular
tourists walked in, glanced about them, and almost
before he could look round, they were gone. They
will say, they saw what there was to be seen. Poor
fellows! Other men might have instructed them:
now they will have their own misconceptions, arising
from hasty impressions, to contend with.
I must say, though, that any thing is better than
insincerity in the way of admiration. If we do not
care about what we see, let us not pretend to do so.
We do not come out to tell lies, but rather to get
away from falsehood of all kinds.
There is also an obsen^ation to be made with re-
spect to the enjoyment of the beauties of natural
scenery, which applies not only to travelling, but is
2o6 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
of very general application ; namely, that we should
enjoy and make much of that which comes in our
way on every-day occasions. While it may be well
worth the while of the lover of nature to be curious
in looking after rocks, rivers, mountains, and water-
falls, yet the obvious, every-day beauties of nature are
not to be disregarded. Perhaps the short hasty gazes
cast up any day in the midst of business in a dense
city at the heavens, or at a bit of a tree seen amid
buildings, — gazes which partake almost more of a
sigh than a look, have in them more of intense ap-
preciation of the beauties of nature than all that has
been felt by an equal number of sight-seers, enjoy-
ing large opportunity of seeing, and all their time
to themselves. Like a prayer offered up in the
midst of every-day life, these short, fond gazes at
nature have something inconceivably soothing and
beautiful in them. There is a remark by an exquisite
observer and very subtle, often very profound, think-
er, which indeed suggested the above thoughts, though
we have each turned the thing a different way, he
looking at a certain unreality in nature, and I con-
sidering the combination of the upturned look to
nature with the ordinary, earthly life of man. "But
this beauty of nature," he says, " which is seen and
felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of the
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 207
day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains,
orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in
still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, be-
come shows merely, and mock us with their unreal-
ity. Go out of the house to see the moon, and 'tis
mere tinsel, it will not please as when its light shines
upon your necessary journey." *
There is this, too, to be said, that this habitual
appreciation of nature on every-day occasions -may
prevent your missing the very highest beauties ; for
what you go to see as a sight, may never be shown
to you under most favorable circumstances ; where-
as a much inferior scene may be combined with such
accidental circumstances of beauty as in reality to be
the finest thing you will ever have an opportunity of
beholding. We must riot be altogether captivated
by great names : the sincere, clear-sighted man is
not ; and has his reward for his independence of
mind, in seeing many beauties in man and nature,
which escape the perception of those who see by
book alone.
Before quitting the subject of travelling, I cannot
help making a remark which has often occurred to
me, but which, however, has regard, not so much to
* Emerson. Nature— Chapter on Beauty of.
2o8 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
the travellers, as to those they travel amongst. It
concerns all those who preside over coach-offices,
diligence-offices, post-offices, and custom-houses.
What a fine opportunity such people have, it seems
to me, to manifest a Christian temper. It is tire-
some to you, O postmaster, to be asked all manner
of questions, of which you cannot see the drift, or
which you think you have answered in your first re-
ply ; but the poor inquirer is far from home ; he has
but a dim understanding of your language, still dim-
mer of your customs \ his little daughter is ill at
home, perhaps ; he wants to be assured by hearing
again what you said, even if he thought he under-
stood the meaning at first : and you should be good-
natured and voluminous in your replies. Besides,
you must bethink yourself, that what is so simple to
you as your daily transactions, may nevertheless be
somewhat complicated, and hard to understand, es-
pecially to a foreign mind. You nlight, I think,
carry in your mind an imaginary affiche, which you
should see before you on the wall which fronts you
as you address your applicants.
ADVICE TO MEN IN SMALL AUTHORITY.
" It is a great privilege to have an opportunity
many times in a day, in the course of your business.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE, 209
to do a real kindness which is not to be paid for.
Graciousness of demeanor is a large part of the duty
of any official person who comes in contact with the
world. Where a man's business is, there is the
ground for his religion to manifest itself."
And we travellers, on our parts, if only from an
anxiety to give other nations a good opinion of ours,
should beware of showing insolence, or imperti-
nence, to those who give us welcome. The relation
of host and guest should never be quite effaced from
the mind of either party.
[UNrVEESITr;
CHAPTER XII.
T WANDERED about amongst the young trees
this morning, looking at their different shades
of green, and I thought if they, drinking from the
same soil and the same air, and standing still in the
same spot, showed such infinite varieties, what might
be expected from men. Then I thought of the an-
ecdote of Charles V. in retirement, endeavoring in
vain to make his watches keep time together, and
the inference he drew therefrom of the difficulty of
making men think alike upon religious matters. Ah,
when it once comes to thinking, good-by to any thing
like strict agreement amongst. men.
But always amongst my thoughts to-day came that
of the death of Sir Robert Peel, which I heard of
last night.* Sad ! sad ! &uch a sorry death for so
great a man — and, as we men should say, so inop-
portune. I had hoped, as I have no doubt many
others who take an interest in public aftairs had done,
that he would have remained as a great power aloof
from party, a weight of private opinion, if we may
♦ July, 1850.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 311
say so, which should come in at the most important
times, to declare what is thought by the impartial
bystander ; who, I should say (varying the common
proverb), does not see most of the game, but sees
things which the players do not see. Then I thought
of his ways, which had often amused me, and which
I had learned to like ; of his exquisite adroitness ; of
tlie dignity of the man ; of the humanity, and of what
always struck me so forcibly — of his amenability to
good reasoning from whatever quarter it came.
Then I thought of what I am often meditating
upon — how the government of this country might
be improved.
There is no doubt that our constitution is a great
thing, the result of long struggle and labor of all
kinds ; but still how much its working might be
amended ; and it is to that amendment that the at-
tention of thoughtful men ought to be directed. Let
us look at the matter frankly on all sides.
It is a great advantage that affairs are long con-
sidered in this country.
It is a great advantage that scarcely any shade of
opinion is without a hearing in the great assemblies
of this country.
It is a great advantage that a number of persons
are exercised in public business ; and that our pros-
212 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
perlty and advancement do not depend on one man,
or even a few men.
It is a great advantage that grievances are sure to
be discussed.
On the other hand, let us honestly allow that it is
a great evil, that the choice of men to fill the most
important offices should be chiefly limited to parlia-
mentary men.
It is a great evil that honors and places should be
confined to them and theirs : why should a man be
made a peer because he has failed in an election, or
a baronet because his vote is much wanted? Such
things are too bad, and must be put a stop to.
It is a great evil that no good measures can be
carried swiftly, — so that remedies often come too
late.
What an improvement it would be if peerages for
life were permitted. It would, in my opinion, sup-
ply the House of Lords with just that element of
popular influence which is wanted.
And so, again, of official seats in the House of
Commons : what a benefit it would be if just men
could be put there occasronally, whom the world
would be glad to listen to, but whom a constituency
will not listen to, or who are not in a position to ask
it to listen.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 213
We must have many improvements in govern-
ment. Questions are looming in the distance w^hich
will require the ablest minds in the country. If wq
ever become more sincere as individuals, we shall
need to express that sincerity in political action.
It seems to me there is vast room for improve-
ment in many branches of government, — in finance,
in colonization, in dealing with the poor, in the
proceedings of the state as regards religion. For,
whatever some of us may think or wish, religious
questions of high import will not long be in the
background.
At present, the relations between people in power
and the general intelligence of the country are not
such as they might be.
I know the difficulty of any sound reforms in
•government ; but if we never attempt any, they are
sure at some time to be attempted by the clumsiest
and coarsest mechanism.
The loss of Sir Robert Peel is great indeed, I
again exclaimed to myself, as I thought what an
official reformer he might have been ; not reckless
to change or blame, inclined to give due considera-
tion to official persons, — a class of men who amply
deserve it, — and carrying out reforms, not in a
spirit of condemnation, but of desire for increased
214 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
effectiveness and force. What a loss in that man !
I will go and talk to Dunsford, I said, from whom
one is always sure of sympathy and kindness.
Without delay I began to turn my steps towards
his parsonage, making my way along the lanes with
lofty hedges, enjoying the scent of the sweet haw-
thorn, and escaping, as far as might be, an east
wind, which with a warm sun made a most unplea-
sant combination of weather ; the east wind, like
some small private vexation, rendering the rest of
one's prosperity, not merely unpalatable, but ill-
timed.
As I went along, I thought of the Church of
England, and of what might be its future fortunes.
I have just been reading the works of two brothers ;
last night I had finished an elaborate attack from
the Roman Catholic side upon the Anglican Church
by one brother ; and this morning I had read a very
skilful attack upon all present religious systems by
another bfother. And I thought to myself, the
Church of England suffers from both attacks.
One's acquaintances who meet one in the streets
shrug their shoulders, and exclaim, " What a state
the Church is in ! Oh that these questions that
divide it had never been raised." I do not agree
with them, and sometimes I tell them so. If tliere
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 215
are these great differences amongst thoughtful men
about great subjects, why should they (the differ-
ences) be stifled ? Are we always to be walking
about as masked figures?
No doubt it is a sad thing that works of charity
and mercy should be ever interrupted by indefinite
disputes upon points which, when once taken up,
are with extreme difficulty settled well, or laid aside.
But then, on the other hand, how much good is pre-
vented by the continuance of insincerity, by an
insincere adherence on the part of men to that which
they believe not. Besides, it is not as if all went
on smoothly now : how much, for instance, the
cause of education suffers from the existence of
religious differences.
Moreover, who can tell the general mischief pro-
duced in all human affairs by degrading views of
religion, which more thought might enlarge or dis-
pel. Men's laws and customs are nierely their
religion applied to life. And, again, what a pity it
would be if controversy were abandoned to the
weak or the controversial only : so that, even for
the sake of peace, it may be good for a man not to
suppress his thoughts upon religious subjects, if he
has any.
For my own part, it has long appeared to me
2l6 COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE,
that our Church stands upon foundations which
need more breadth and solidity, both as regards the
hold it ought to have on the reason, and on the
affection of its members.
As to the hold upon the reason : suppose we
were taught to study scientifically, up to a certain
point, something that admitted of all the lights of
study ; and were then called upon to take the rest
for granted, not being allowed to use to the utter-
most the lights of history and criticism which have
been admitted at first: how very inconclusive the
so-called conclusions would appear to us. It would
be like placing a young forest tree in a hothouse
and saying, " Grow so far, if you like, expand to
the uttermost in this space allowed to you, but there
is no more room after you have attained these lim-
its ; thenceforward grow inwards, or downwards,
or wither away." Our Church is too impersonal,
if I may use that expression : it belongs too much
to books, set creeds and articles, and not enough to
living men ; it does not admit easily of those modi-
fications which life requires, and which guard life
by adapting it to what it has to bear.
Again, as regards affection, how can any but
those who are naturally devout and affectionate,
which is not the largest class, have an affectionate
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 21 7
regard for any thing which presents so cold and
formal an appearance as the Church of England.
The sei*vices are too long ; and, for the most part,
are surrounded by the most prosaic circumstances.
Too many sermons are preached ; and yet, after all,
too little is made of preaching. The preachers are
apt to confine themselves to certain topics, which,
however really great and solemn, are exhaustible :
at least as far as men can tell us aught about them.
Order, decency, cleanliness, propriety, and very
often good sense, are to be seen in full force in An-
glican Churches once a week ; but there is a defi-
ciency of heartiness.
The perfection to be aimed at, as it seems to me,
as I have said before, would be a Church with a
very simple creed, a very grand ritual, and a useful
and devoted priesthood. But these combinations
are only in Utopias, Blessed Islands, and other fab-
ulous places ; no vessel enters their ports, for they
are as yet only in the minds of thoughtful men.
In forming such an imaginary Church, there cer-
tainly are some things that might be adopted from
the Roman Catholics. The other day I was at
Rouen ; I went to see the grand old Cathedral ; tlie
great western doors were thrown wide open right
2l8 COMPANIONS OF 31 Y SOLITUDE.
upon the market-place filled with flowers, and, in
the centre aisle, not before any image, a poor wo-
man and her child were praying. I was only there
a few minutes, and these two figures remain im-
pressed upon my mind. It is surely very good that
the poor should have some place free from the re-
straints, the interruptions, the familiarity, and the
squall dness of home, where they may think a great
thought, utter a lonely sigh, a fervent prayer, an
inward wail. And the rich need the same thing too.
Protestantism, when it shuts up its churches, or
allows discreditable twopences to be paid at the
door, cannot be said to show well in these matters.
In becoming so nice and neat, it seems to have
brushed away a great deal of meaning and useful-
ness with the dirt and irregularity.
The great difficulty in reforming any Church lies,
of course, in the ignorance of its members. More-
over, there may be great indifference to any Church,
or dissatisfaction with it, amongst its members ; but
then people say to themselves, if we touch this or
that thing which we disapprove of, we do not know
what harm we may not be doing to people of less
insight or less caution than ourselves ; and so they
go on, content with a very rude attempt indeed at
communion in spiritual matters, provided they do
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 219
not, as they would say, unsettle their neighbors.
There is something good and humble in this ; there
is something also of indifference : if our ancestors
had always been content with silent protests against
the things they disapproved of, we might have been
in a worse position than we are now.
To lay down any guidance for action in this mat-
ter is very difficult indeed. According to the usual
course of human affairs, some crisis will probably
occur, which nobody foresees, and then men will be
obliged to speak and act boldly. It behooves them
to bethink themselves, from time to time, of whither
they are tending in these all-important matters.
The intellectual energies of cultivated men want
directing to the great questions. If there is doubt
in any matter, shall we not examine.? Instead of
that, men shut their thoughts up, and pretend to be
orthodox — play at being orthodox. Meanwhile,
what an evil it must be to the Church, if through
unnecessary articles of faith, some of the best men
are prevented from becoming clergymen, and many
of the laity rendered less hearty members than they
otherwise would be, of the Church.
Dwelling upon such thoughts, which are full of
pain and anxiety — the thoughts of one who is al-
ways desirous to make the best of any thing that is
220 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE,
before him, and who is well aware how hard it is to
reform anything from without — I reached Duns-
ford^s quiet little parsonage.
I found my old friend sitting in his garden in the
very spot where I expected to find him, and for
which I made my way without going through the
house. In the middle of his kitchen-garden he has
placed his beehives, and has surrounded them by a
semicircle of juniper-trees about five feet high. In
front of the beehives is a garden-seat upon which I
found him sitting and reciting Latin poetry to him-
self, which I had no difficulty in discerning, though
I could not hear the words, to be from his favorite
author, Virgil. EUesmere, who views every thing
in a droll sarcastic way, says that our friend has
chosen this particular seat in his garden from its
being likely to be the place least disturbed by his
sister and his curate. Though very good people
they are somewhat fussy, and given to needless
gesticulation, which the bees dislike, and occasion-
ally express their dislike in a very tangible manner.
This spot, therefore, which is guarded by thousands
of little soldiers, well-armed and well-equipped,
distinguished from their human prototypes by gain-
ing supplies and not by wasting them, afibrds a very
secure retreat for our friend, where he can talk
■ COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 221
Virgil to himself for half-an-hour on a sunny
morning.
It was not altogether without trepidation that I
took my seat by his side amidst innumerable buzz-
ings and whizzings ; but he assured me with a
smile that the bees would not hurt me, and in a
minute or two their presence was only like a mur-
mur of the distant wind through the trees.
I began at once to narrate to Dunsford the melan-
choly circumstances of Sir Robert Peel's death,
which he had not heard of before, and which
affected him deeply. Naturally his emotion in-
creased my own. After I had told him the sad
story, and answered his various questions about it,
we remained silent for a time. I looked at the bees,
and tliought of Manchester and other of the great
hives and marts of industry: Dunsford went on
with his Virgil : at last we thus resumed our dia-
logue.
Dunsford, I do not wonder, my dear Leonard,
that you were much affected by Sir Robert's death.
I always felt how much you ought to sympathize
with him. Indeed there are two or three minor
points in which you often put me a little in mind
of him.
Milverton. It is strange I never heard you say so.
222 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
Dunsford, I did not think you much admired
him, or would feel pleased at being likened to him
in any thing. But this is what I mean, — it always
appeared to me, that he had the most peculiar ap-
preciation of the irrationality, and difficult to man-
age, of mankind. This was one of the things
which made him so cautious. He never threw out
his views or opinions till the moment when they
were to be expressed in action. He did not want
to provoke needless opposition. In short it was
clear that he had the keenest apprehension of the
folly of the world : he was very obstinate withal,
or, as I had better say, resolved ; and very sensitive.
He did nothing under the hope that it would pass
easily, and cost him nothing to do ; and yet, at the
same time, though he foresaw distinctly opposition
and unreason and calumny, he felt them more per-
haps than quite beseemed so wise and resolute a
man when they did come. You best know whether
I am right in attributing some of the same strength
and some of the same weakness to the man who
sits beside me.
Milverton, I neither admit nor deny : but sure-
ly, Dunsford, it is not unwise nor imprudent to
expect to have every degree of irrationality to battle
with in any thing one may undertake ; and time is
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 223
seldom lost in preparing to meet that irrationality ;
or strength, in keeping one's projects long before
one. This is not merely worldly wisdom : such
conduct results from a deep care for the success of
the project itself.
Dunsford. Much of it is the result of tempera-
ment; and temperament is a part of our nature
sooner developed than almost any other. How soon
you see it in children, and how decisively marked.
Milverion. I cannot help thinking what a
shrewd man you are, Dunsford, when you choose
to be so. It is you who ought to conduct great law-
cases, and write essays, instead of leaving such
things to Ellesmere and myself, and pretending that
you are the simple, unworldly, retired man, content
to receive your impressions of men and things from
your pupils. I suppose that watching these bees,
gives you a great insight into the management of
states and the conduct of individuals. You recite
Virgil to them, and they buzz into your ears bee-
wisdom of the most refined kind.
Dunsford. Talking of essays, may I ask, Mr.
Milverton, what you are about ? You have not been
near me for some time, and I always construe your
absence into some new work.
Milverton. You are right in this case ; but I
224 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
mostly avoid talking about what I am doing, at
least, till it is in some state of forwardness. Talking
prevents doing. Silence is the great fellow- workman.
Dunsford. The bees ?
Milverton. They buzz when they come home :
they are silent enough at their work. Moreover, I
am beginning to care less and less about criticism
during the progress of work, fearing less, you see,
Dunsford, the irrationality of the world ; for what
you mainly aim to get at by listening to criticism is
not so much what will be understood, as what will
be misunderstood, — and that misunderstanding
arises sometimes from your own error in thought,
sometimes from bungling workmanship, sometimes
from the irrationality of mankind ; or from some
unfortunate combination of these various sources of
error. My growing indifference to criticism, in fact
the reason why my steps have not been bent so
often lately in the direction of the Rectory, I would
have you to believe, results, not from any increasing
confidence in my own workmanship, but from my
growing faith in the general rationality and kindli-
ness of mankind.
Dunsford. Humph !
Milverton. Besides, my endeavors and aspira-
tions are so humble —
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 225
Dunsford. Humph !
Milverton. You will agree with me when you
see what I mean. They are so humble that they do
not require all that adverse criticism and consequent
moulding which more elaborate schemes might do.
For instance, I believe in the indefinite improva-
bility of ourselves and of every thing around us. Do
not be frightened, and lookup so strangely, Dunsford :
I do not mean perfectibility. Now, if by way of carry-
ing out this belief of mine, I had any scheme of social
regeneration, in which every thing and everybody was
to be put in his or its right place, of course it would
have been necessary for me to have come very often
over to the Rectory, to drink in sound wisdom in the
way of all kinds of comment, objection, and elabora-
tion, from you and Lucy, and these wise bees.
Dunsford. I declare, Milverton, when Ellesmere
is not with us, you play both his part and your own :
but^o on.
Milverton. No — but, seriously, my dear Duns-
ford, to go on with my schemes of improvability, I
assure you they are on a very humble basis. Look-
ing around I see what slight things are often the real
hindrances to the best endeavors of men. I would
aim to take these hindrances out of a man's path.
Mark you, I do not expect that he will therefore
15
226 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
become a greater man, but he will certainly be able
to act more like one. To descend to particulars,
why I delight so much in sanatory reform is not
so much in the thing itself, if I may say so, as in
the additional power and freedom it gives to man-
kind. I do not know what social arrangements
will be good for the coming generation, what
churches will be best for them, what forms of legis-
lation ; but I am sure that in whatever they do,
they will be entangled with fewer difficulties, and
will act more healthfully and wisely, if they are
healthy men themselves.
Dunsford, Good doctrine, I think.
Milverton. In the same way I would seek to
remove all manner of social disabilities ; always
again with a view to the future, that the removal of
these disabilities may give room for more freedom
of thought and action.
Dunsford, I do not quite understand this, but
do not wait to explain : go on.
Milverton, It is for the same reasons that I de-
light in education (and you know that I do not mean
a small thing by education) because of its enabling
powers, to use a legislative phrase. Here again I
do not pretend to see what will become of people
when educated, or to suggest the forms that such
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 227
discipline will ultimately fit them for ; but I cannot
but believe that it will make any people into mate-
rial more malleable in the hands of the wise and
good — of those who should be, and who, to a cer-
tain extent are, the leaders of each generation. In-
deed, I believe, that always as men become greater,
they are more easy to deal with.
Dunsford, I begin to see what you would be at.
Milverton. I conceive that as civilization ad-
vances, a thousand little complexities arise with it.
To untie them in any way may be a humble effort,
but seems to me a most needful one. What we are
ever wanting is to give freedom without license : to
free a man from mean conformity —
Dunsford. By making him conform to some-
thing higher. I think, Milverton, I have assisted in
pointing this out to you when I was afraid that you
were making too much war upon conformity.
Milverton, It is only one of many things, my
dear friend, which I have learned from you.
Dunsford. Thank you, my dear Leonard. I
must say you have always been most willing to give
more than due heed to any thing your old tutor has
said, with the exception of the advice he used to
tender to you at College about getting up certain
problems in the Differential and Integral Calculus.
228 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
Milverton. And I wish I had listened to that
advice also.
Dunsford, But are you not a little afraid, my
friend (not that I would say one word against any
good purpose you may have), that with all your
imaginary cultivation and enabling men to act more
freely and wisely by the removal of small disabilities,
which yet I admit may be great hindrances : are you
not afraid, that after all we shall advance into some-
thing very tiresome, somewhat of a dead level, which
observers even now say is very visible in the world —
no great man, but a number of decent, ordinary,
cultivated, common-place persons? I believe I am
now talking Ellesmere to you ; for, in reality, I pre-
fer the advancement of the great mass of mankind
to any pre-eminence of a few : but still I should like
to hear what you have to say to this objection.
Milverton. I am delighted that you have raised it.
I suspect there is a great delusion in this matter.
The notion that there is a dead level in modern times
is a mistake : // is only that there are 7nore emi-
nences. Formerly, one class or kind of men made a
noise in the world, or at least made the chief noise ;
and, looking across the hazy distances of time, we
are deluded by great names. An Alexander, a Ti-
mour the Tartar, an Attila, a Charlemagne, loom
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 229
large in the distance. There were not so manyways
to pre-eminence then — added to which, I should be
very slow to connect greatness of thought, or great-
ness of nature, with resounding deeds.
Dunsford. Surely, at the latter end of the fif-
teenth, and in the sixteenth century, there were un-
rivalled great men — a galaxy of them.
Milverton, Yes, I admit ; and no man looks up
to some of the personages of that era with more
reverence and regard than I do : and, moreover,
I would not contend that there may not be an oc-
casional galaxy, as you have termed it, of such
men. But all I have to contend against is, that the
tendency of modern cultivation is not necessary to
bring men to a dead level, and to subdue all real
greatness.
Du7tsford, But you must admit that there is a
certain smallness in the men of our time, and a fool-
ish hurry in their proceedings.
Milverton, No : that is not exactly what we have
reason to complain of, but rather a certain coldness,
an undue care for respectability, and too much desire
to be safe. One of our most observant men, who has
seen a great deal of the world, and always desired to
understand the generation under him as well as that
which came before him, says, that the young men of
230 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
the present day are better than the young men of his
time ; but there is one thing that he complains of in
them, and that is, their fear of ridicule. To a certain
extent he is rigl-U;, I think ; only I should modify his
remark a little, and say, that it is not exactly that
they fear ridicule, as they dislike to put themselves
in such a position that they may justly be made ri-
diculous. It is partly caution, partly fastidiousness,
partly a fear of ridicule.
Dunsford. Well, then, I think that each man is
more isolated than he used to be. There is less of
clanship, less of the rallying round men of force or
genius. How very rare a thing it is for one man to
devote himself to the purposes framed by another's
mind, or to give evidence of something like devotion
to his person. Yet this would often be the wisest
and the noblest form of exertion.
Milverton. But then there would be no original-
ity, as they think, and there is now a diseased desire
for originality, which is never to be got by the men
who seek it. All the while the most original thing
would be to be humble and subservient to great pur-
poses, from whomsoever adopted.
At the same time, I must say that, as far as I have
observed, the young would be very devoted to for-
ward the purposes of their elders and superiors,
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 23 1
whether in parliament, in offices, or in any other
functions of civil life : and I think that in our times,
great fault has often been on the side of the elders in
not making just use of the young talent lying every-
where about them.
Dunsford. That may be.
Milverton. Indeed, Dunsfordj it is not every one
who, like yourself, is anxious to elicit the powers,
and to carry forward the purposes, of younger men.
It requires a great deal of kind-hearted imagination
to do that.
Dunsford. You make too much of this, Milver-
ton. It is natural that I should care about my own
pupils more than any thing else. I live in their
doings.
Milverton. And in your new edition, that is to
be, of the Second part of Algebra, as Ellesmere
would say, if he were here : but to return to our sub-
ject, I will tell you, at least I will try and tell you,
in a somewhat fanciful way, what I think of the
whole matter.
Have you ever known well a beautiful bit of nat-
ural scenery, before man has come to settle in it — a
cliff near the sea, a mead near a lake, or the outskirts
of a noble forest ? If so, you recollect the delicately
rounded, gracefully indented, or grotesquely out-jut-
233 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
ting forms, which the rock, or the hill, or the
margin of the waters, or the outskirts of the wood
had taken — forms dear to the painter and the poet.
(Here Lucy entered the enclosure where we were
sitting.)
Lucy. The painter and the poet — I am sure thi§
is something which I may listen to, Mr. Milverton ;
may I not ?
Milverton. There are few persons, Lucy, who
have more feeling for the works of painters and
poets ; and so you have a right to hear any thing
that is to be said about them. (I then repeated to
her the former part of the sentence.) You then, per-
haps, after an interval of many years, pass by the
same place. A number of square white houses, poor
in form and questionable in design, deface the beau-
tiful spot. The delicate impressions of nature are
gone, and, in their stead, are the angular marks of
men's handiwork. The painter hurries by the place ;
the poet, too, unless he is a very philosophic one,
passes shuddering by. But, in reality, what forms
of beauty, in conduct, in suffering, in endeavor ; what
tragedies, what romances ; what footprints, as it
were, angelic and demoniac — now belong to that
spot. It is true, we have lost wonderful lichens and
those exquisitely colored mosses on the rocks which
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 233
were the delight of the artist. Perhaps there are now
ungainly initials in their place, illustrative, however,
of a deeper poetry than ever was there before. But
I grow too fanciful, and must descend to prosaic ex-
planations. I mean, in short, that though there is
more cultivation (which, it must be confessed, effaces
somewhat of the natural rugged beauty of the scene),
there is also more of a higher beauty which sits be-
side the other (plain prosaic cultivation) always,
though oft unkenned by mortal eyes. So, in the ad-
vancement of mankind, the great barbaric outlines
are broken into, and defaced ; but a thousand new
beauties, new delicacies, even new greatnesses, take
their place. Nature is ever affluent in such things ;
and this effect of cultivation is to be seen, not only
in mankind, but in individual men. For instance,
Dunsford, the very shyness and coldness of modern
youth arises in some measure from the growth of
tact and delicacy. But I need not explain further ;
you see what I mean.
Dunsford. I think I do ; and as it is a charit-
able view, I wish to think it a true one. But I could
object to your metaphor, if I chose to do so.
Lucy. And is it equally true, Mr. Milverton,
with the young ladies as with the young gentlemen }
Milverton. Why, my dear Lucy, the young la-
234 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
dies are always of course more in harmony with
nature. Though women are more slavish to small
conventionalities than men, the real advance of civ-
ilization tells much less upon women than upon
men. One, who knew them well, says that " The
ideas of justice, of virtue, of vice, of goodness, of
wickedness, float only on the surface of their souls
(consequently the prevailing ideas amongst men on
these subjects make comparatively little impression
upon women), in the depths of which (their souls)
they have ' I'amour propre et I'interet personnel ' (I
quote his very words) with all the energy of na-
ture ; and, more civilized than ourselves from with-
out, they have remained true savages within ; (plus
civilis^es que nous en dehors, elles sont restees de
vraies sauvages en dedans)."
Lucy. The man is a savage himself: he must be
a French Mr. EUesmere.
Milverton, They are daring words, certainly ;
but perhaps they have a scintilla of truth in them.
However, I will come again some day, and endea-
vor to elucidate these things a little further. Now
I see the bees are flocking homewards with well-
laden thighs, and I, too, must go back to my hive,
well laden with the wisdom to be gained from the
thoughtful trees and beautiful flowers of the Rectory.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 235
■Dunsford.
**Et fessse mult& referunt se nocte minores,
Crura thjmo plense : pascuntur et arbuta passim,
Et glaucas salices, casiamque crocumque rubentem,
Et pinguem tiliam, et ferrugineos hjacinthos.
Omnibus una quies operum, labor omnibus unus."
Milverton. Now, Miss Lucy, you must trans-
late. I know you do that with all your uncle's fa-
vorite bits : and to tell the truth, I have forgotten
some of the words. What is tilia ?
Lucy, You must not be very critical then, if I
do translate, and ask for every word to be rendered.
Now homewards come, borne on the evening breeze,
With heavy-laden thighs, the younger bees :
Each in the arbutus has hid his head,
In yellow willow-bloom, in crocus red.
And the rich foliage which the lindens spread:
One common labor each companion knows,
And for the weary swarm is one repose.
Milverton. A little liberal, Lucy, but it gives
some of the sense of the passage, I think ; and you
are a good girl for not making more fuss about let-
ting me hear it. I really must go now ; so good-by.
And so I walked homewards, thinking "much of
Dunsford's mild wisdom, and how beautiful it is
to see old age gracefully filling its high vocation of
a continually enlarging sympathy with the young,
and tolerance for them. As Goethe says, " A man
236 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
has only to become old to be tolerant; I see no
fault committed," he adds, " which I also might
not have committed." But then it is a Goethe who
is speaking. Dunsford has reached to the same
level of toleration by sheer goodness of nature.
CHAPTER XIII.
A LONG, solitary ride enabled me to-day to
bring to a conclusion a chapter which I had
been thinking of for some time. It is difficult for
a man, unless he is a perfect horseman, to think
connectedly during a ride, which is the very .reason
why horse-exercise is so good for the studious and
the busy ; but the inspiriting nature of the exercise
may enable the rider to overcome special points of
difficulty in any subject he is thinking over. In
truth, a subject of any magnitude requires to be
thought over in all moods of mind ; and that alone
is one great reason for maintaining thoughts long
in mind, before expressing them in speech or writ-
ing, that they come to be considered and recon-
sidered under all aspects, and to be modified by the
various fortunes and states of temperament of the
thinker.
There is all the difference between the thoughts
of a man who is plodding homewards on his own
legs, under an umbrella, and those of the same man
238 - COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
who, on horseback, Is springing over the elastic turf,
careless whether wind or rain drives against him
or not, that there was between the after-dinner
and the next morning councils of the ancient
Germans.
And, indeed, the subject I was thinking of, needs
to be considered in all weathers of the soul, for it
is very large ; and if I could present to other minds
what comes under this subject in mine, I should
have said a good deal of all that I may have to say
on most subjects.
Without more introductory words, for a long
introduction would be especially out of place in
this case, the subject in question is the art of coming
to an end.
Almost all human affairs are tedious. Every thing
is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches,
pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure
and business labor equally under this defect, or, as
I should rather say, this fatal superabundance.
It must not be supposed that tiresomeness belongs
to virtue alone. Few people are more pedantic and
tiresome than the vicious ; and I doubt whether if
one were thrown on a desert island, and had only
the means of rescuing Blair's works and many fic-
tions of decidedly bad tendency, but thought to be
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. . 239
amusing, one would not exclaim, " Blair for ever ! '*
and hurl the fictions into their element, the water.
But let us trace this lengthiness, not only in
the results of men's works, but in their modes of
operation.
Which, of all defects, has been the one most fatal
to a good style ? The not knowing when to come to
an end. Take some inferior writer's works. Dis-
miss nearly all the adjectives ; when he uses many
substantives, either in juxtaposition, or in some de-
pendence on each other, reduce him to one ; do the
same thing with the verbs ; finally, omit all the
adverbs ; and you will, perhaps, find out that this
writer had something to say, which you might never
have discovered, if you had not removed the super-
fluous words. Indeed, in thinking of the kind of
writing that is needed, I am reminded of a stanza
in a wild Arab song, which runs thus : —
"Terrible he rode along,
With his Yemen sword for aid ;
Ornament it carried none,
But the notches on the blade." *
So, in the best writing, only that is ornament which
* See Taifs Magazine^ Ji^ljj 1850, for what seems to be
an admirable translation of a most remarkable poem '* of
an age earlier than that of Mahomet."
240 COMPANIONS OF MT SOLITUDE.
shows some service done, which has some dint of
thought about it.
Then there is a whole class of things which, though
good in themselves, are often entirely spoilt by being
carried out too far and inopportunely. Such are
punctiliousness, neatness, order, labor of finish, and
even accuracy. The man who does not know how
to leave off, will make accuracy frivolous and vexa-
tious. And so with all the rest of these good things,
people often persevere with them so inaptly and so
inopportunely as to contravene all their real merits.
Such people put me in mind of plants which, be-
longing to one country and having been brought to
another, persist in flowering in those months in
which they, or their ancestors, were used to flower
in the old country. There is one in a garden near
me which in February delights to show the same
gay colors for a day or two here, in these northern
climes, with which it was wont to indulge the far-ofl*
inhabitants of countries near the Black Sea. It is
in vain that I have remonstrated with this precocious
shrub about its showing its good qualities at so in-
appropriate a period ; and in fact it can make so
good an answer to any man who thus addresses it,
that, perhaps, it is better to say nothing and pass
by, thinking only of our own faults in this respect —
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 241
and then, indeed, the shrub will not have flowered
quite in vain, if it has been only for a single day.
A similar error in not knowing when to leave off
occurs in the exercise of the critical faculty, which
some men use till they have deadened the creative :
and, in like manner, men cavil and dissect and dis--
pute till that which was merely meant as a means of
discovering error and baffling false statement, becomes
the only end they care about, — the truth for them.
But a far more important field for this error of
superabundance, is in the vices of mankind. If
men had but known when to leave off, what would
have become of ambition, avarice, gluttony, quar-
relling, cruelty? Men go on conquering for con-
quering's sake, as they do hoarding for hoarding's
sake. If it be true that Marlborough went on gain-
ing needless victories, wasting uncalled-for blood
and treasure, what a contemptible thing it is ! I
say, " if" he did so, for but a little investigation
into history shows one how grievously men have
been misrepresented ; and, not having looked into
the matter, I will not take the responsibility of the
accusation on myself. But the instance, if just, is
an apt one ; and, certainly, there are many similar
instances in great commanders to bear it out. But
16
242 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
what a contemptible application of talent it is, that
a man should go on doing something very well
which is not wanted, and should make work for
himself that he may shine, or at least be occupied.
It is absolutely childish. Such children have great
conquerors been.
It is a grand thing for a man to know when he
has done his work. How majestic, for instance, is
the retirement of Sylla, Diocletian, and Charles the
Fifth. These men may not afford particularly spot-
less instances, but we must make the most of those
we have. There are very few men who know how
to quit any great office, or to divest themselves of
any robe of power.
How much, again, this error of not knowing
when to leave off, pervades the various pursuits of
men ! How it is to be seen in art and literature ;
how much too in various professions and various
crafts ! The end is lost sight of in a foolish exercise
of some facility in dealing with the means ; as when
a man goes on writing for writing's sake, having
nothing more to tell us ; or when a man who exer-
cises some craft moderately well for the sake of
gain, confines himself to that craft and is a crafts-
man nowhere else, when the gain is no longer
needful for him.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 243
But it may be said, why speak of the art of leav-
ing off ? the instances you have given might some-
times be put under the head of not knowing how to
begin ; or, at any rate, they might more legiti-
mately come under the heads of the various evil
passions and habits to which they seem to belong.
I do not altogether deny this, but at the same time
I wish to show that there is an art of leaving off
which may be exercised independently, if I may so
express it, of the various affections of the mind.
This art will depend greatly upon a just appreci-
ation of form and proportion. Where this propor-
tion is wanting in men's thoughts or lives, they
become one-sided. The mind enters into a peculiar
slavery, and hardens into a creature of mere habits
and customs. The comparative youthfulness of
men of genius, which has often been noticed, results
from their having a finer sense of proportion than
other men, which prevents their being enslaved by
the things which gradually close up the avenues of
the soul. They, on the contrary, hold to Nature till
the last, and would partake, in some measure, if it
may be so, of her universality.
I hardly know any thing that serves to give us a
greater notion of the importance of proportion than
the fact made known to us by chemistry, that but a
244 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
few elements mingled together in different propor-
tions give things of the most different nature (as we
suppose) and different efficiency. This fact, after a
consideration of the infinitely great as appreciated
by the telescope, and the infinitely small as divulged
by the microscope, is to my mind the most signifi-
cant in physics.
I fear, without more explanation, I shall hardly
make myself understood here. I mean that this
fact in chemistry affords a high idea of the impor-
tance of proportion ; and the error we have been
considering is one that mainly arises from dispro-
portion.
For instance, this want of power to leave off
often shows an inadequate perception of the propor-
tion which all proceedings here ought to bear to
time. Every thing is a function of time, as the
mathematicians would well express it. Then only
consider what needful demands there are on that
time : what forms, compliments, civilities, offices
of friendship, relationship, and duty, have to be
transacted. Consider the interruptions of life. I
have often thought how hardly these bear upon the
best and most capable of men. Perhaps there are
not many more than a thousand persons in the long
roll of men who have done any thing very great for
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 245
mankind. Nations should have kept guard at their
doors, as we fancy, that they might work undis-
turbed ; but, instead of that, domestic misery, pov-
erty, error, and affliction of all kinds no doubt
disturbed and distracted them, — not without its
enlightenment, and not perhaps to be wholly regi*et-
ted for their sakes. But has any one thing so
misled them and counteracted their abilities so much
as this want of proportion I am speaking of, aris-
ing from their ignorance or inability to leave off ?
which has limited their efforts to one thing, — has
made the warrior a warrior only, incapable of deal-
ing with his conquests; the statesman a man of
business and devices only, so that he gains power
but cannot govern ; the man of letters a master of
phrases only ; the man of so-called science a man,
like the Greek philosophers, who could only talk
about science, — skilful in that, but never having
left off that talking to make a single experiment.
But surely there might be a breadth of purpose and
extent of pursuit without inane versatility. As
things are, it is not often that you find any one who
holds his art, accomplishment, function, or busi-
ness, in an easy disengaged way, like a true gentle-
man, so that he can bear criticism upon his doings
in it nobly or indifferently, who is other than a kind
246 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
of pedagogue. Much more difficult is it to find a
man who sees the work before him in its just pro-
portions and does it, yet does not make out of his
work an obstacle to his perception of what besides
is good and needful ; and who keeps the avenues
of his mind open to influences other than those
which immediately surround him.
I am ashamed when I think of the want of cul-
tivation even in those v/ho are reckoned most culti-
vated people ; and not so much of their want of
cultivation, as their want of the power of continu-
ous cultivation. Few, therefore, can endure leisure,
or in fact can carry other burdens than those which
they have been used to — like mules accustomed to
carry panniers or pack-saddles in mountainous
countries, which steer their way when free from
their burdens just as if they still bore them, allow-
ing always the distance between the rocks and
themselves which was necessary to clear their load-
ed panniers ; a mode of proceeding which exceed-
ingly alarms and astonishes the traveller mounted
on these mules, till he understands the reason of it.
Both men and mules are puzzled at having some-
thing new» to undertake : and indeed the art of
leaving off* judiciously is but the art of beginning
something else which needs to be done.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 247
But if there is any thing in which the beauty and
the wisdom of knowing when to leave off is partic-
ularly manifested, it is in behavior. And how rare
is beautiful behavior ; greatly by reason of the want
of due proportion in the characters and objects of
most persons, and from their want of some percep-
tion of the ' whole of things. Let any man run
over in his mind the circle of his friends and ac-
quaintances ; also, if he is a well-read man, of
those whom he has become acquainted with in his-
tory or biography ; and he will own how few are,
or have been, persons of beautiful behavior, of real
greatness of mind.
This greatness of mind which shows itself daily
in behavior, and also in conduct when you take the
whole of a life, may co-exist with foibles, with
stains, with perversities, with ignorance, with short-
comings of any and of every kind. But there is
one thing which is characteristic of it, and that is,
its freedom from limitation. No one pursuit, end,
aim, or occupation permanently sullies its percep-
tions. It may be wicked for a time as David, cruel
for a time as Caesar, even false ; but these are only
passing forms of mind ; and there is still room for
virtue, piety, self-restraint, and clemency. Its in-
telligence is not a mirror obedient to private im-
248 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
pulses that reflects only that which its will com-
mands for the time ; but gives candidly some
reflection of all that passes by. Hence, by God's
blessing, it will know how to leave off*; whereas,
on the contrary, the mind which is hedged in by
the circumstances and ideas of one passion, or pur-
suit, is painfully limited, be that passion or pursuit
what it may.
Observe the calmness of great men, noting by
the way, that real greatness belongs to no station
and no set of circumstances. This calmness is the
cause of their beautiful behavior. Vanity, injus-
tice, intemperance, are all smallnesses arising from
a blindness to proportion in the vain, the unjust,
and the intemperate. Whereas, no one thing, un-
less it be the love of God, has such a continuous
hold on a great mind as to seem all in all to it. The
great know, unconsciously, more of the real bene-
ficent secret of the world : there is occasional re-
pose of soul for them. How can such men be
subdued by money, be enclosed by the ideas of a
party, or a faction, be so shut up in a profession, an
art, or a calling, as to see naught else, or to believe
only in one form of expression for what is beauti-
ful and good?
Passing by a mountain stream, I once beheld an
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 249
unfortunate trunk of a tree, which, having been shot
down the side of a hill and thus sent on, as the
custom is in those countries, down the stream to
find its way to the haven, had unfortunately come
too near a strong eddy, which caught it up and
ever whirled it back again. How like the general
course of man ! I thought. Down came the log
with apparent vigor and intent each time, and it
seemed certain that it would drive onwards in the
course designed for it; but each time it swirled
round and was sent back again. Ever and anon it
came with greater force, described a wider arc, and
surely now, I thought, it will shoot down on its
way : but no, it paused for a moment, felt the influ-
ence of its fatal eddy, and then returned with the
like force it had come down with. I waited and
waited, groups of holiday-making people passed by
me wondering, I dare say, what I stayed there to
see ; but unmindful of any of us, it went on per-
forming its circles. I returned in the evening ; the
poor log was still there, bus}^ as ever in not going
onwards ; and I went upon my journey, feeling very
melancholy for this tree, and thinking there was
little hope for it. It may even now be at its vain
gyrations, knowing no rest, and yet making no ad-
vance to the seas for which it was destined.
250 COMPANIONS OF Mi" SOLITUDE.
So let it not be with us : caught up by no mean
eddies which draw us to the side of the stream and
compel us to revolve in the same narrow circlet of
passion, of prejudice, of party, of ambition, of de-
sire ; finding in constancy no limitation, in devoted-
ness of pursuit no narrowness of heart, or thought,
or creed ; choosing as the highway of our career
one which widens and deepens ever as we move
along it ; let us float on to that unmeasured ocean of
thought and endeavor where the truly great in soul
(often great because humble, for it is the pride of
man which keeps him to small purposes and pre-
vents his knowing when to leave off with earthly
things), where the truly and the simply great shall
find themselves in kindred waters of far other depth
than those which they were first launched out
upon.
After writing down the foregoing thoughts upon
the art of coming to an end, which had been the
subject of my morning's ride, I went out upon the
lawn to refresh myself with the evening air. It
was very clear ; the stars and the moon were in all
their splendor ; and the shadows of the trees lay
quietly upon the grass, as if the leaves, for the most
part so restless, were now sleeping on their stems,
like the birds upon the branches.
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 25 1
I had resolved that this reverie, a fitting one to
conclude with, should be the last of which I would
give an account. There is something sad about
the end of any thing, whether it be the building of
a palace, the construction of a great history, like
that of Gibbon, the finishing of a child's baby-house,
or the conclusion of some small, unpretending work
in literature. The first feelings of an author soon
pass by. Those hopes and those fears which quite
agitate the young pretender to fame are equally
dulled by failure or success. Meanwhile, the re-
sponsibility of writing does not grow less, at least
in any thoughtful mind. With the little knowledge
we have on any subject, how we muster audacity to
write upon it, I hardly know.
These signs, too, that we use for communicating
our thoughts, which we call language, what a
strange debris it is of the old languages, — a result of
the manifold corruptions of childish prattle, of the
uncouth talk of soldiers sent into conquered prov-
inces, of the vain eftbrts of rude husbandmen to catch
an unfamiliar tongue. And, if we went back to the
old languages, with equal knowledge of their ante-
cedents, we should probably find that they also were
lamentable gatherings from forgotten tongues, huts
out of the ruins of palaces.
252 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
So much for the vehicle in which we convey our
thoughts, imperfect enough in themselves.
Then, if we turn to the people, the manners, the
customs, and the laws we have to act upon with
these thoughts, there, too, what a mass of confusion
is presented to us, collected from all parts of the
earth and from all periods of history.
As I thought of this, I seemed to see the various
races who had occupied this very spot flit by —
Briton, Roman, Saxon, Norman, each with his laws,
manners, and customs imprinted on his bearing, the
wrecks of mighty empires shown in the very accou-
trements of each shadowy form as it went by. And
this mass of strangely mingled materials is the sub-
stance that these imperfect thoughts expressed iti
imperfect language have to act upon.
And, then, what say these stars with their all-elo-
quent silence, seeming to reduce all our schemes
into nothings, to make our short-lived perplexities
ludicrous, ourselves and our ways like a song that is
not sung? What a cold reply they seem to give to
all human works and questionings.
But, said I to myself, such trains of thought may
easily be pursued too far ; we must not bring in the
COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. 253
Immensities about us and within us to crush our en-
deavors. Here we are ; let stars, or bygone times,
or the wrecks of nations, or the coiTuptions of lan-
guage, say or show what they will. There is some-
thing also to be done by us : we have our little
portions of the reef of coral yet to build up. If we
have not time to become wise, we have time enough
to become resigned. If we have rude and confused
material to work upon, and uncouth implements to
work with, less must be required from us ; and,, as
for these stars, the true meaning to be got from them
is in reality an encouraging one.
Some men have thought that one star or planet
befriended them ; some, another. This man grew
joyful when the ascendant star of his nativity came
into conjunction with Jupiter, favorable to his des-
tinies ; and that man grew pale when his planet
came into opposition with Saturn, noxious to his
horoscope, threatening the " House of Life." Nor
is astrology extinct; science only lends it more
meaning, but not a private one for kings or poten-
tates. These stars say something very significant to
all of us: and each man has the whole hemisphere
of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and be-
friend him. In the morning time, they come not
within ken, when they would too much absorb our
254 COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.
attention, and hinder our necessary business, but in
the evening, they appear to us, to chasten over-per-
sonal thoughts, to put down what is exorbitant in
earth-bred fancies, and to encourage those endeav-
ors and aspirations which meet with no full response
from any single planet, certainly not from the one
we are on, but which derive their meaning and their
end from the vastness and the harmony of the whole
of God-directed nature and of life.
So thinking, I was enabled for a moment to see,
or rather to feel, that the threads of our poor human
affairs, tangled as they seem to be, might yet be in-
terwoven harmoniously with the great chords of love
and duty that bind the universe together. And so I
returned to the house, and said " Good night " cheer-
fully to the friendly stars, which did not now seem
to oppress me by their magnitude, or their multi-
tude, or their distance.
INDEX,
AcADEMus, groves of, have a competitor, 141.
Accomplishments aid in getting rid of small anxieties, 187.
Accuracy spoilt by being carried too far, 240.
Administrative officer suggested, 103.
Admiration, insincerity in, to be avoided, 205.
Advice to a descendant who would retrieve the fortunes of
the Author's family, 53 ; to men in small authority, 208.
Affection not generally inspired by the Church of England,
216.
Affections of the mind, skill in dealing with, to be ac-
quired, 171.
Agreement amongst men, in thought, impossible, 210.
Amusement necessary for man, 34-36 ; should be contrived
for him, 36 ; poverty of England's resources, with re-
spect to, 204.
Anglo-Saxons can afford to cultivate art, 36.
Annals of the poor, familiar words in, 104.
Arab song, verse of, applied to writing, 239.
Art, the pursuit of, often incompatible with fortune, 59.
Art of coming to an end, largeness of the subject, 238 ;
may be exercised independently of the affections of the
mind, 243 ; ignorance of, has limited men's efforts, 245 ,
is but the art of beginning something new, 246.
Astrology not extinct, 253.
Author's thoughts on the future fortunes of his family, 46.
Author, the first feelings of one soon pass away, 251.
256 INDEX.
Authority on great subjects, scarcely any mind so free
from its influence that it can boldly apprehend the ques-
tion for itself, 147.
B.
Bacon, remark from him on the need of a friend, 53 ; an
instance of the compatibility of literature with action,
72. ^
Behavior, the beauty and wisdom of knowing when to
leave off particularly manifested in, 247 ; beauty of, very
rare, 247.
Bereavements, 199.
Blair, his works preferred to fictions, 238.
Blame often good, but only as good fiction, 179.
Books a resource against physical and mental storms, 169.
Borgias, the cause of new Post-office regulations, 26.
Breadth of purpose might exist without inane versatility,
245.
Brutus, how his part might be played in the law, 8.
Burke, an instance of the compatibility of literature with
action, 72.
Burleigh, Lord, speech of his to his gown of state, 186.
Caesar, an instance that literature is compatible with great
actions, 71 ; his cruelty consistent with greatness of
mind, 247.
Calumny, ordinary source of, 176; most men of many
transactions subject to, 176; to be looked upon as pure
misfortune, 176; way of treating it, 176; too much stress
should not be laid on it, 177.
Camoens, an instance that literature is compatible with
action, 71 ; quotation from, 155.
Carlyle, Mr., says that a great writer creates a want for
himself, 72.
INDEX. 257
Censoriousness the inventor of many sins, 31.
Cervantes, an instance that literature is compatible with
action, 71.
Chance delights in travelling, 199.
Character, diversities of, met with in travel, a delight, 200.
Charity, taught by error, 15 ; requires the sternest labor,
2,2,'i one of the most difficult things, 34; not comprised
in remedying material evils, 34; often mixed up with a
mash of sentiment and sickly feeling, 89; a difficult and
perplexed thing, 165.
Charles V., anecdote of, 210; his retirement majestic, 242.
Christianity partly to blame for the over-rigid views with
reference to unchastity, 87 ; to correct political econo-
my, 100; made a stumbling-block to many, 106.
Christian temper, opportunities for its manifestation af-
forded to all functionaries connected with travelling,
208.
Church, qualities to be sought for in, 24; perfection to be
aimed at in, 217.
Churches, advantages of their being open, 218.
Church, the, obstacles to the reform of, 218; evil of un-
necessary articles of faith in, 219.
Church-going, hindrances to, amongst the poor in Eng-
land, 105.
Church of England, the, suffers from opposite attacks,
214; its foundations need more breadth and solidity,
216; too impersonal, 216; deficiency of heartiness in,
217.
Church questions, opposing facts and arguments in, sel-
dom come into each other's presence, 24.
Chemistry affords a high idea of the importance of pro-
portion, 243.
Civilization ought to render the vicissitudes of life less
extreme, 87; its advance tells less upon women than
upon men, 234.
Climate of England, difficult to live in, 7.
17
258 INDEX,
Colleges an instance of misplaced labor, 12.
Colonization, room for improvement in, 213.
Coleridge, his explanation of the word " world," 106.
Competition, evils of, considerable, 33 ; in length of ser-
mons, 33.
Competition in puritanical demonstration, injurious to
sincerity, 33 ; the child of fear, 33.
Companionship in travelling, dangers of, 196.
Companions, qualities which would render them a gain
198; much to be learned from, in travel, 198.
Confessor, good functions of, might be fulfilled bj many
Protestants, 106.
Confidence, in making any, you lose the royal privilege
of beginning the discourse on that topic, 138; should
be put aside in bearing misfortune, 170; origin of, 170;
difficult to lay aside, 170.
Conquerors, great, have committed the error of super-
abundance, 241.
Constitutional governments have their price, 102.
Constitution of England, advantages of, 211; disadvan-
tages of, 212.
Contempt not justifiable in mortals, 108.
Conventionality, an enemy to the opposers of the "great
sin of great cities," 108; the adoration offered up to
worldliness, 108; increases the great sin of great cities,
109'.
Conventionalities, small, women more slavish to them
than men, 234.
Conviction, unlimited power of a spirit resulting from,
148; its expansive power, 153.
Counteraction the true strategy in attacking vice, 97.
Country in winter like a great man in adversity, i6.
Courier, Paul Louis, an instance that literature is compat-
ible with action, 71.
Critical faculty, error in exercising it too much, 241.
Criticism, compared to the copies of Leonardo da Vinci's
INDEX. 259
fresco of the Last Supper, 23 ; object in listening to it,
224.
Cultivation, a potent remedy for the *' great sin of great
cities," 97 ; metaphor on, 232.
Cultivation, general, the want of, cripples individual ex-
cellence, 7 ; the want of, prevents the enjoyment of sci-
entific discovery, 12.
Cultivation, continuous, should be the object for states-
men and all governing people, 98; the power of, defi-
cient in most men, 246.
Customs, evil, spread rapidly, 203 ; good, make way slow-
ly* 203.
Cyrus, his mode of keeping the Lydians tame, 36.
D.
David, his wickedness consistent with greatness of mind,
247-
Day, a, an epitome of a life, 193.
Dead level in men's character, notion of, a mistake, 228.
Descartes, an instance that literature is compatible with
action, 71.
Description of a foreign scene from a bridge, 159.
Despair the slave-driver to many crimes, 86.
Despotism, the sternest, often found in social life, 41.
Differences, great, amongst thoughtful men about great
subjects should not be stifled, 214.
Difficulties, intellectual and spiritual, great hearing of,
suggested, 24.
Diocletian, his retirement majestic, 242.
Diplomatic services peculiarly fit to be performed bj liter-
ary men, 73.
Disasters become possessions, 172.
Disciples do not aid the discovery of truth, 193.
Disproportion a main cause of the error of superabun-
dance, 245.
26o INDEX.
Dissatisfaction with their own work, advice to those who
suffer from, iS6.
Division of labor partly a cause of ignorance, 12.
Divorce, law of, may require modification, 146.
Domestic annoyances, mischief and vexations caused by,
42.
Domestic servants particularly liable to the slavery of con-
ventionality, 109; temptations of, no; improvements in
the management of, suggested, no.
Doubts on the greatest matters the result of the falsifica-
tions of our predecessors, 22.
Duelling disarmed by public opinion, 151.
Dutch, the, their " forget book," used for the mishaps of a
journey, 194.
Duties often very dubious, 164.
Dwellings, improvement of, one means of enabling the
wages of the poor to go further, 100.
Education, a potent remedy for the "great sin of great
cities," 97; must continue through life, 161; larger views
of, required, 161 ; suffers from religious differences, 214;
enabling powers of, 226.
Ellesmere's story, 118.
Emerson, quotation from his chapter on Beauty of Nature,
207.
Emigration not the only remedy for poverty, 100.
End of any thing, the, sadness of, 245.
England, foreign notions of, 122; Constitution of, its ad-
vantages, 210; its disadvantages, 211.
English people, their genius severe, 36; would not be
cramped by judicious regulations, 64; description of,
194.
Errors made into sins by miscalling them, 32.
Evil carries with it its teachings, 95.
INDEX. 261
Evils, their true proportions often not understood, 171.
Experience gained by suffering, 189; of life, an aid in
bearing injustice, 183.
F.
Fable of a choice being given to men on their entrance
into life, 58.
Family vanity exasperates rigid virtue, 90.
Father, a thoroughly judicious, one of the rarest creatures,
94.
Felicity a hostage to Fortune, 189.
Fiction has filled women's heads with untrue views of hu-
man life, 97 ; may be better than nothing for the mind,
98.
Finance, room for improvement in, 213.
Flowers, their names show that poets lived in the country,
21.
Folly will find a place even at the side of princes, 64.
Foresight crushes all but men of great resolution, 56.
Freedom, clamor for, a chief obstacle to its possession, loj
from restraint in travelling, 199.
Freemasonry among children, 44.
Friend, the advantage of one, 179.
Friends not of a prolific nature, 53.
G.
Gayety not necessarily an element of wickedness, 28.
Gardens, the love of, the last refuge of art in the minds
of Englishmen, a.8.
Garrick, speech of Johnson's to him, 188.
Generosity of mean people does not deceive the bystander,
150.
Germans, simplicity of, 121.
Goethe feared to enter upon biblical criticism, 22; says
262 INDEX.
that no creature is happy, or even free, except in the
circuit of law, 93; remark by him on toleration, 236.
Gospel, the, prevents the triumph of despair, 86.
Government unfit for women, 145; many improvementb
in, required, 213; souq^ reform in, difficult, 213.
Grand thoughts adverse to any abuse of the passions, 96.
Great men, their abilities counteracted by a want of pro-
portion, 245; cause of their calmness, 248; and repose
of soul, 248; their freedom from limitation, 247.
Great mind, no one thing, unless it be the love of God,
seems all in all to it, 248.
Great sin of great cities, the, pointed out, 83; mournful-
ness of, 83 ; an accurate concentration of the evils of
society, 83; nature of, 84; degrades the race, 85; feel-
ings of the people concerned in it, 85; main cause of,
86; over-rigid views in reference to unchastity a cause
of, 87; charity in the virtuous recommended towards,
88; want of obedience to Christian precepts in reference
to, 89; want of charity towards, makes error into crime,
90; family pride prevents charity in, 90; ill-management
of parents a cause of, 92 ; uncleanliness of men a cause
of, in the lower classes, 94; cause of, applying to men,
95; the want of other thoughts one source of, 96; edu-
cation and cultivation potent remedies for, 97 ; remedies
for, 99; conventionality aids to increase it, 108; domes-
tic servants frequent victims to, 109; improvement in
men to be hoped for as a remedy, iii ; love a preventa-
tive of, 112.
Greatness of mind may co-exist with shortcomings of
every kind, 247 ; its characteristic, 247 ; belongs to no
station, 247.
Greatness of thought or nature not always connected with
resounding deeds, 229.
Greeks, perhaps prevented from becoming dominant by a
cultivation of many arts, 37.
Grotius, an instance of the compatibility of literature with
action, 72.
INDEX. 263
H.
Happiness, personal, small amount of, needed, 189.
Heart, the human, tyranny of, how proved, 203.
Hindrances to n^en's best endeavors often slight, 225.
History of the world, the, compared to the prints of Leo-
nardo da Vinci's fresco of the Last Supper, 23.
Home should be made very happy to children, 93.
Horse exercise advantages of, 237.
House of Commons, improvement in, suggested, 212.
House of Lords, how to supply to it an element of popu-
lar influence, 212.
Human affairs almost all tedious, 238; threads of, might
be interwoven with the cords that bind the universe to-
gether, 254.
Human beings, their power to maintain their structure
unimpaired in a hostile element shown in the law, 11.
Human life, mischief of unsound representations of, 98.
Humanity, a low view of, probably the greatest barrier to
the highest knowledge, 96.
Humility, taught by error, 15, 21 ; promotes cheerfulness,
21 ; in dealing with misfortunes, 174.
Humor the deepest part of some men'« nature, 191.
Hurry, wise men do not, without good reason, 204.
Hypocrisy the homage which vice pays to virtue, 108.
Hypocrites pronounced the choice society of the world, 88.
I.
Ignorance partly proceeds from division of labor, 12 ; a
hindrance to Church reform, 218.
Imagination, want of, in most men confines them to the
just appreciation of those natures which are like their
own, 178.
Indulgence requires no theory to support it, 95.
Infelicities belong to the state below, 189.
264 INDEX.
Injudicious dress, great suffering caused by, 42.
Injurious comment on people's conduct, considerations
which should prevent it, or console the sufferers, 177.
Injustice a very different thing from misfortune, and in-
commensurable with it, 179; arises from blindness to
proportion, 246.
Insincerity about religion, its continuance prevents much
good, 214.
Intemperance arises from blindness to proportion, 246.
Intellectual energies of cultivated men want directing to
the great questions, 219.
Intelligent men liberal in assigning the limits of power, 67.
Intelligent public opinion will prevent despotism in a min-
ister, 67.
Intercommunication between rich and poor should be
facilitated, 103.
Investigation into prices will prevent people from running
madly after cheapness, 100.
Irrationality of mankind to be prepared for in all under-
takings, 222.
J.
James the First of Scotland, an instance of the compati-
bility of literature with action, 72.
Johnson, Dr., one of his highest delights, 140; speech of
his to Garrick, 1S8.
Journey, a, how dissimilar to a life, 193.
Judas Iscariot might have done better than to hang him-
self, 91.
Justice not to be expected in this world, 183 ; idea of its
personification, 183.
K.
Kindness not an encourager of the " great sin of great
cities," 91.
INDEX. 265
Knowledge, its doubts a hindrance to vigorous statement,
28; of vice not knowledge of the world, 95; of the
world, how gained, 96 ; the means and the end in trav-
elling, 194.
L.
Labor of finish spoilt by being carried too far, 240.
Lacedaemonians acknowledged the duties of a father, 165.
Language, change of, in travelling, a delight, 201 ; imper-
fections of, 251.
Law, loss in, 8; improvement in, to be hoped for from
general improvement of the people, 8 ; satire falls shoH
when aimed at its practices, 10; maintained as a mystery
by its adjuncts, 11 ; many admirable men to be found in
all grades of, 11 ; compared to a fungus, 47.
Laws of supply and demand overruled by higher influ-
ences, 150.
Lawyers, time spent at their offices the saddest portion of
man's existence, 10; not answerable for all the evils at-
tributed to their proceedings, 10; work of, compared with
that of statesmen, 172.
Lengthiness fatal to a good style, 239.
Leonardo da Vinci, thoughts suggested by his fresco of
the Last Supper, 23.
Life, objects of, as regards this world, 28; the bustle of,
keeps sadness at the bottom of the heart, 50.
Limitation, freedom from, a characteristic of greatness of
mind, 247.
Literary men more of cosmopolites than other men, 73 ;
would be improved by real business, 73; plan for re-
warding them proposed, 74.
Literary work requires many of the qualifications of a man
of business, 70.
Literature affords a choice of men to a statesman, 70.
Log caught by an eddy, man's course compared to one,
249.
266 INDEX.
Logic halts sometimes when applied to charity, 88.
Loneliness of a thoughtful man, i8.
Lorenzo de' Medici, an instance of the compatibility of
literature with action, 72.
Love cannot be schooled much, 98; implies infinite re-
spect, 112; power of, 112; the memory of, must prevent
"the great sin of great cities," 112; of God need not
withdraw us from our fellow-men, 34.
Luther, quotation from, on tribulation, ^6\ saying of his
to his wife, 182.
M.
Machiavelli, an instance of the compatibility of literature
with action, 71.
Malignities, why fostered in small towns and. villages, 36.
Man, his faculties frequently appear inadequate to his sit-
uation, 13; generally his own worst antagonist, 20; be-
comes deformed by surrendering himself to any one
pursuit, 73; an isolated being, 230; one rarely found
who holds his art, accomplishment, function, or busi-
ness in an easy disengaged way, 245 ; one whose mind
is open to other influences than those which surround
him, difficult to find, 246; his course like a log caught
by an eddy, 249.
Marlborough, his victories, if needless, contemptible, 341.
Marriage, unhappiness in, does not justify "the great sin
of great cities," 146; our present notions of, probably
imperfect, 147.
Medical men, opportunities of, for communication with
the poor, 107.
Men require amusement as much as children, 44; occa-
sionally deceived by theories about equality, 94; ill pre-
pared for social life, 196; how to fit them for social life,
197 ; will be more easy to deal with as they become
greater, 227 ; their pursuits pervaded by the error of not
knowing when to leave off, 240 ; small number of, who
INDEX. 267
have done anything great for mankind, 244; compared
to mules carrying burdens in mountainous countries,
246.
Men, the greatest, compared to fig-trees in England, 192.
Men, great, imaginative, never utterly enslaved by their
functions, 200.
Men of genius, their comparative youthfulness results
from their fine sense of proportion, 243.
Men of the world, self-sufficiency of, 148; their probable
objection to the proposed remedies for " the great sin of
great cities," 149; reply to their objection, 149.
Mendoza, an instance that literature is compatible with
action, 71.
Mental preparation for travelling essential, 195.
Metaphor, probably the introducer of frightful errors, 22;
essential in narration, 22.
Metastasio, passage from, 190.
Milton, an instance of the compatibility of literature with
action, 72; his "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,'*
arguments contained therein not easily answered, 147.
Mind, repose of, gained by travel, 198.
Minister of education, duties which might devolve on one,
104.
Ministers of religion, their temptations to err, 106.
Mirabeau, men like him will have an aversion to the
"great sin of great cities," 113.
Miseries of private life require to be kept down by wise
and good thoughts, 41.
Misfortune often makes men ungenerous, 51.
Misfortunes exercise all the moods and faculties of a man,
172; wise way of dealing with them, 174; mean, often
most difficult to bear, 184.
Misplaced labor, quantity of, 7; observable in schools, col-
leges, and parliaments, 12.
Modern cultivation does not necessarily tend to subdue
greatness, 229.
268 INDEX.
Motiomaniacs, too little account taken of them, 176.
Moral writings, the great triumph of, 59.
Murillo, pictures of, truly admired only by a kindred gen-
ius, 204.
N.
Napoleon, his invasion of Russia a good opportunity for
working out his errors, 13; an instance that literature is
compatible with great actions, 71 ; probable effect of his
worldly wisdom in not remembering too much his Rus-
sian campaign, 173.
Nations, benefits arising from intercommunication of, 203 ;
differences between, small when compared with their
resemblances, 203.
Native land, a serious place to every man, 198.
Nature, considerable address required to cope with her, 12 ;
goodness of, in permitting error, 20; habitual apprecia-
tion of, to be cultivated, 207.
Neatness spoilt by being carried too far, 240.
Neglect, aids in bearing it, 180.
Newton, change of study his recreation, 186.
o.
Obloquy, consolation in bearing it, 175.
Obstruction to be encountered by men in power, 6$'
Obtrusiveness of thoughts, 17.
Officers of State ought to prevent much private expense in
law, 9.
Opinion, the general body of, very fluent, 175.
Originality, diseased desire for, 230.
Parents, ill management of, a common cause of " the
great sin of great cities," 92.
Parliaments an instance of misplaced labor, 12.
INDEX. 269
Paternal duties, imperative, 165; difficult to fulfil, 166;
forgetfulness of, encourages immorality, 167.
Peace brings with it a sensation of power, 79.
Pedagogues, most men become such, 245.
Peel, Sir Robert, his death inopportune, 210; his good
qualities, 211; great loss in him, 213; sketch of his
character, 222.
Peerages for life desirable, 213.
Pensions should generally be given to the persons who
could have done the things for which such rewards are
given, but who have not done them, 74.
People, modern, a mass of confusion, 352.
Pine wood, description of one, 78.
Pharisees pronounced the choice society of the world, 88.
Philosophy, sobriety of mind from, 187.
Physical works, waste and obstruction in, 12.
Plato, his harsh opinion of poets accounted for, 22.
Plausibility makes injustice hard to unravel, 124.
Pleasure, Spanish verses on, 17; past, Sydney Smith's
opinion of, 18; falls into no plan, 79.
Politics, greater things may be done out of them than in
them, 19.
Poor, the limited education of, a mistake, 161 ; room for
improvement in dealings with, 216.
•Pope Alexander the Sixth, to blame for the post-office
regulations, 27.
Portrait painting compared to the copies of Leonardo da
Vinci's fresco of the Last Supper, 23.
Poverty, the removal of, a remedy for *' the great sin of
great cities,' 99; two kinds of, 99; women endure an
undue proportion of it, 144.
Power, in rising to it, men fail to learn how to use it, 102.
Practical wisdom in dealing with vexations, 174.
Preachers, topics of, too limited, 217.
Pride chastises with heavier hand than Penitence, 185; of
man prevents his knowing when to leave off, 250.
270 INDEX.
Priests should facilitate the intercommunication between
rich and poor, 103.
Private opinions on important subjects, by whom to be
indulged in, 57.
Property, facilities should be afforded for the poor to be-
come owners of, loi.
Proportion, want of, makes men one-sided, 243 ; compara-
tive youthfulness of men of genius results from their
fine sense of, 243 ; its importaiice shown in chemistry,
243 ; want of, accounts for the rarity of beautiful be-
havior, 247.
Protestantism, disadvantage of its closed churches, 218.
Proverbs seldom true except for the occasion on which
they are used, 59.
Prudence a substantial virtue here, 7.
Public meeting, noise made by a man there proportioned
to his ignorance of the subject, 27.
Public notaries suggested, 9.
Public opinion, triumph of, over duelling, 151.
Punctiliousness spoilt by being carried too far, 240.
Puritan, absurd, the correlative of a wicked Pope, 27.
Puritanism, thoughts on, 30; good as an abnegation of
self, 30; when an evil, 31.
Q:
Qiiaker, conversation of one, 29.
R.
Railway legislation required earlier Government inter-
ference, 6<,.
Raphael, pictures of, truly admired only by a kindred
genius, 204.
Rational pleasures difficult to define, 28.
Reason, the hold of the Church on, considered, 216.
Reasoning powers require development in women, 107.
INDEX. 271
Recollection one of the main delights of a journey,
194.
Reflection on past ambitions, sadness of, 19.
Reform, slow progress of, 153.
Reformers, reproach made against, 152; objects of, 151.
Regret, almost infinite, at having missed the one desired
happiness, 188.
Remedies, political, often come too late, 212.
Remorse a main obstacle to outward improvement, 85.
Relations of life, the great, difficult of performance, 92.
Religion, comfort of mind, from, 187; room for improve-
ment in the proceedings of the state with respect to, 213 ;
probable mischief produced bj degrading views of, 215;
thoughts on, should not be suppressed, 216.
Religious spirit, deficiency of, not concealed by outward
deeds, 150.
Repining person, speech made to one, 58.
Representation and transfer of property, improvement in,
a means of enabling the wages, of the poor to go fur-
ther, 100.
Respectability, undue care for, amongst men, 229.
Responsibility of writing does not grow less, 251.
Retired allowances for servants suggested, no.
Retrospect not a very safe or wise thing, 45 ; cannot be
avoided, 45 ; how the process of, differs from that pur-
sued by Alnaschar, in the Arabian Nights, 45.
Retrospection, excessive, to be avoided, 89.
Reveries, various forms of, 61.
Ridicule, fear of, amongst young men, 230.
Rochefoucauld probably a dupe to impulses and affection
51-
Roman Catholics, some things might be adopted from
them in forming a Church, 217.
Roman Emperors, the probably maligned, 175.
Rouen, scene in the Cathedral there, 217.
Russian Campaign, a, experienced by most men, 13.
272 • INDEX.
S.
Sanitary measures, delay in, 66.
Sanatory reform gives additional power and freedom to
mankind, 226.
Satire becomes narrative when aimed at the Law, 10.
Savings, the investment of, a question of the highest im-
portance, lOI.
Scandal a resource against dulness, 36.
Schools an instance of misplaced labor, 12.
Schoolmasters would form a good means of communica-
tion with the poor, 106.
Schoolmistresses would form a good means of communi-
cation with the poor, 106.
Scriptures, the, probable misrepresentations of, 23.
Seduction a poor transaction, 163.
Self-denial, when to be admired, 31.
Self-inflicted suflfering which cannot be turned to account
for others, a loss, 30.
Self-restraint the great tutor, 95.
Sermons, competition in length of, 33 ; those we preach
for ourselves always interesting, 1 19 ; too many preached
217.
Shaftesbury, an instance of the compatibility of literature
with action, 72.
Shelley, lines of his applied to love, 112.
Shrewd writers often the most easy to impose upon, 51,
Sidney, an instance that literature is compatible with ac-
tion, 71.
Silence, the great fellow-workman, 224.
Sins, easy to manufacture, 31.
Small anxieties hard to bear, 184; art in managing them,
185; hard to dismiss, 186.
Small errors often alter the course of a man's life, 14.
Smith, Sydney, his opinion of past pleasure, 18.
Smoke, suppression of, 153.
Social abuses, erroneous views of, 85.
INDEX. 373
Social disabilities, the removal of, would give room for
freedom of thought and action, 328.
Social evils compared to old trees, 66; importance of una-
nimity with respect to, 151.
Social life, returns for causes of suffering in, suggested,
41 ; men ill prepared for, 197 ; how to fit man for, 197.
Social pleasures not necessarily wrong, 29; afford scope
for charity, 34.
Social troubles equal to national ones, 42.
Socialism put forward to fill the void of government, 102.
Socrates, his philosophy cannot be imitated here in Eng-
land, 7.
Somers, an instance of the compatibility of literature with
action, 72.
Spanish colonists in America, the first, beg that lawyers
may not go out to their colony, 10.
Spanish poetry, quotation from, on pleasure, I7'
Spanish proverbs, 88.
Stars, the, thoughts suggested by their aspect, 198; speak
significantly to. all, 253.
Statesmanship, one of its great arts, 37 ; always appears
to come too late, 63.
Statesmen, to be looked up to as protectors from lawyers,
9; two different things demanded from, 65; their indi-
vidual temperament affects government, 68; tempera-
ment desirable for, 68 ; principles to be inculcated in, 69 ;
work of, compared with that of a lawyer, 172.
St. John, an instance of the compatibility of literature
with action, 72.
Success depends upon the temperament of a man, 56; in
life, man's faculties inadequate to, 15.
Sudden distress and destitution amongst young women,
how to be averted, 103.
Sun, the, worshipped by few idolaters, 191 ; his simple
form provoked no desire to worship, 192 ; all nature
bending slightly forwards in a supplicating attitude to
him, might be visible to finer senses, 192.
18
274 INDEX.
Superabundance, error of, in the vices of mankind a field
for it, 241.
Swift, his imaginings not more absurd than transactions
in the law, 10.
Sylla, his retirement majestic, 242.
Systems save the trouble of thinking,.69.
Teaching difficult from want of distinct convictions, 22.
Temperament, the best for success described, 56.
Temple, Sir William, an instance of the compatibility of
literature with action, 72.
Theology, science of, would not have existed if all clergy-
men had been Christians, 156.
Thoughts at the mercy of accident, 156 ; reason for main-
taining them long on the mind, 237.
Time, every thing a function of, 244; needful demands on,
244.
Timidity of mind renders women the victims of conven-
tionality, IC7.
Tiresomeness belongs not to virtue alone, 238.
Titian, pictures of, truly admired only by a kindred gen-
ius, 204.
Tragedy, different phases of, 155.
Translation compared to the copies of Leonardo da Vinci's
fresco of The Last' Supper, 23.
Traveller, anecdote of one, 205.
Travellers, hints to, on their behavior, 209.
Travelling in a carriage, delights of, 140; must improve
all men, 159; ancient mode of, compared with modern,
, 196; advantages of, 198-201; enjoyments of, 201.
Truth sustains great loss in Church questions, 24; carries
in its hand all earthly and all heavenly consolations, 171.
Tyranny of the weak, a fertile subject, 37 ; by whom exer-
cised, 38; why endured, 38; the generous great sufferers
from, 38; compared to an evil government, 38; great in
INDEX. 275
quiet times, 38; analysis of, 38; its cessation suggested,
39; a common form of it, 39: reason for putting a limit
to it, 39.
u.
Uncharitable speeches, a fear of, the incentive to many
courses of evil, 91.
Uncultivated people seldom just or tolerant, 142.
Unhappiness, regret at having missed the one desired
happiness a common form of, 188; medicaments for this
form of, 188.
V.
Vanity arises from blindness to proportion, 153.
Variety found in travelling diverts the mind, 198.
Vice, its usual victims, 97.
Vices, some of the most dangerous flourish most in soli-
tude, 29; of mankind, a field for the error of supera-
bundance, 241.
Violence always loss, 18.
Virgil, quotation from, 235.
Virtuous, the charity recommended to them, 88.
Visual image, which should change according to the want
of truth in the comments upon the person seen, im-
agined, 179.
w.
Wages of poor, improvement in dwellings a means of
making them go further, 100; improvement in the rep-
resentation and transfer of property a means of enabling
them to go further, loi.
Wisdom an aid in bearing injustice, 183.
Women brought up here to be incompetent to the man-
agement of affairs, 11 ; their fondness for merit a cause
of their frailty, 94; rarely deceived by theories about
equality, 94; immense importance of a better education
to them, 107; love personal talk, 128; do not always
276 INDEX.
understand each other, 136; some of the highest natures
amongst them may be found in the lowest ranks, 141 ;
have to endure an undue proportion of poverty, 143 ; a
wrong appreciation of their powers circumscribe their
means of employment, 144; generally deficient in meth-
od, 144; want accuracy, 144^ new sources of employ-
ment might be opened to them, 145 ; government not fit
for them, 145 ; more slavish to small conventionalities
than men, 234.
World, the, its advancement depends upon the use of
small balances of advantage over disadvantage, 13; no
one discovery resuscitates it, 13 ; its want of ingenuity
and arrangement in not providing employment for its
unemployed, 145; always correcting its opinions, 175.
World, we are in the thick of one of misunderstanding,
haste, blindness, passion, indolence, and private inter-
est, 183.
Workwomen, small wages of, 100.
Would-be teachers, suggestions to, 25.
Writer, a, often requires less to make things logically clear
to men, than to put them into the mood he wishes to
have them in, 115.
Y.
Youth, beauty of, 114; modern, cause of their shyness and
coldness, 233.
Young talent not made just use of, 231.
Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by John Wilson & Son.
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" It must be because the reading world is unregenerate that Arthur Helps
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