{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_7438/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_7438","id":"gutenberg_7438","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7438","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Conduct of life"],"text":"This eBook was produced by Les Bowler.\n\n                       CASSELL\u2019S NATIONAL LIBRARY.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n\n\n\n\n                            Friends in Council\n\n\n                               First Series\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                                    BY\n\n                            SIR ARTHUR HELPS.\n\n                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]\n\n                       CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:\n\n                      _LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.\n\n                                  1891.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nARTHUR HELPS was born at Streatham on the 10th of July, 1813.  He went at\nthe age of sixteen to Eton, thence to Trinity College, Cambridge.  Having\ngraduated B.A. in 1835, he became private secretary to the Hon. T. Spring\nRice, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Melbourne\u2019s Cabinet,\nformed in April, 1835.  This was his position at the beginning of the\npresent reign in June, 1837.\n\nIn 1839\u2014in which year he graduated M.A.\u2014Arthur Helps was transferred to\nthe service of Lord Morpeth, who was Irish Secretary in the same\nministry.  Lord Melbourne\u2019s Ministry was succeeded by that of Sir Robert\nPeel in September, 1841, and Helps then was appointed a Commissioner of\nFrench, Danish, and Spanish Claims.  In 1841 he published \u201cEssays Written\nin the Intervals of Business.\u201d  Their quiet thoughtfulness was in accord\nwith the spirit that had given value to his services as private secretary\nto two ministers of State.  In 1844 that little book was followed by\nanother on \u201cThe Claims of Labour,\u201d dealing with the relations of\nemployers to employed.  There was the same scholarly simplicity and grace\nof style, the same interest in things worth serious attention.  \u201cWe say,\u201d\nhe wrote, towards the close, \u201cthat Kings are God\u2019s Vicegerents upon\nEarth; but almost every human being has, at one time or other of his\nlife, a portion of the happiness of those around him in his power, which\nmight make him tremble, if he did but see it in all its fulness.\u201d  To\nthis book Arthur Helps added an essay \u201cOn the Means of Improving the\nHealth and Increasing the Comfort of the Labouring Classes.\u201d\n\nHis next book was this First Series of \u201cFriends in Council,\u201d published in\n1847, and followed by other series in later years.  There were many other\nwritings of his, less popular than they would have been if the same\nabilities had been controlled by less good taste.  His \u201cHistory of the\nConquest of the New World\u201d in 1848, and of \u201cThe Spanish Conquest of\nAmerica,\u201d in four volumes, from 1855 to 1861, preceded his obtaining from\nhis University, in 1864, the honorary degree of D.C.L.  In June, 1860,\nArthur Helps was made Clerk of the Privy Council, and held that office of\nhigh trust until his death on the 7th of March, 1875.  He had become Sir\nArthur in 1872.\n\n                                                                     H. M.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\n\nNONE but those who, like myself, have once lived in intellectual society,\nand then have been deprived of it for years, can appreciate the delight\nof finding it again.  Not that I have any right to complain, if I were\nfated to live as a recluse for ever.  I can add little, or nothing, to\nthe pleasure of any company; I like to listen rather than to talk; and\nwhen anything apposite does occur to me, it is generally the day after\nthe conversation has taken place.  I do not, however, love good talk the\nless for these defects of mine; and I console myself with thinking that I\nsustain the part of a judicious listener, not always an easy one.\n\nGreat, then, was my delight at hearing last year that my old pupil,\nMilverton, had taken a house which had long been vacant in our\nneighbourhood.  To add to my pleasure, his college friend, Ellesmere, the\ngreat lawyer, also an old pupil of mine, came to us frequently in the\ncourse of the autumn.  Milverton was at that time writing some essays\nwhich he occasionally read to Ellesmere and myself.  The conversations\nwhich then took place I am proud to say that I have chronicled.  I think\nthey must be interesting to the world in general, though of course not so\nmuch so as to me.\n\nMilverton and Ellesmere were my favourite pupils.  Many is the heartache\nI have had at finding that those boys, with all their abilities, would do\nnothing at the University.  But it was in vain to urge them.  I grieve to\nsay that neither of them had any ambition of the right kind.  Once I\nthought I had stimulated Ellesmere to the proper care and exertion; when,\nto my astonishment and vexation, going into his rooms about a month\nbefore an examination, I found that, instead of getting up his subjects,\nlike a reasonable man, he was absolutely endeavouring to invent some new\nmethod for proving something which had been proved before in a hundred\nways.  Over this he had wasted two days, and from that moment I saw it\nwas useless to waste any more of my time and patience in urging a scholar\nso indocile for the beaten path.\n\nWhat tricks he and Milverton used to play me, pretending not to\nunderstand my demonstration of some mathematical problem, inventing all\nmanner of subtle difficulties, and declaring they could not go on while\nthese stumbling-blocks lay in their way!  But I am getting into college\ngossip, which may in no way delight my readers.  And I am fancying, too,\nthat Milverton and Ellesmere are the boys they were to me; but I am now\nthe child to them.  During the years that I have been quietly living\nhere, they have become versed in the ways of the busy world.  And though\nthey never think of asserting their superiority, I feel it, and am glad\nto do so.\n\nMy readers would, perhaps, like one to tell them something of the\ncharacters of Ellesmere and Milverton; but it would ill become me to give\nthat insight into them, which I, their college friend and tutor, imagine\nI have obtained.  Their friendship I could never understand.  It was not\non the surface very warm, and their congeniality seemed to result more\nfrom one or two large common principles of thought than from any peculiar\nsimilarity of taste, or from great affection on either side.  Yet I\nshould wrong their friendship if I were to represent it otherwise than a\nmost true-hearted one; more so, perhaps, than some of softer texture.\nWhat needs be seen of them individually will be by their words, which I\nhope I have in the main retained.\n\nThe place where we generally met in fine weather was on the lawn before\nMilverton\u2019s house.  It was an eminence which commanded a series of\nvalleys sloping towards the sea.  And, as the sea was not more than nine\nmiles off, it was a matter of frequent speculation with us whether the\nlandscape was bounded by air or water.  In the first valley was a little\ntown of red brick houses, with poplars coming up amongst them.  The ruins\nof a castle, and some water which, in olden times, had been the lake in\n\u201cthe pleasaunce,\u201d were between us and the town.  The clang of an anvil,\nor the clamour of a horn, or busy wheelwright\u2019s sounds, came faintly up\nto us when the wind was south.\n\nI must not delay my readers longer with my gossip, but bring them at once\ninto the conversation that preceded our first reading.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Milverton_.  I tell you, Ellesmere, these are the only heights I care to\nlook down from, the heights of natural scenery.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Pooh! my dear Milverton, it is only because the particular\nmounds which the world calls heights, you think you have found out to be\nbut larger ant-heaps.  Whenever you have cared about anything, a man more\nfierce and unphilosophical in the pursuit of it I never saw.  To\ninfluence men\u2019s minds by writing for them, is that no ambition?\n\n_Milverton_.  It may be, but I have it not.  Let any kind critic convince\nme that what I am now doing is useless, or has been done before, or that,\nif I leave it undone, some one else will do it to my mind; and I should\nfold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow in that field there, with a\nplacidity that would, perhaps, seem very spiritless to your now restless\nand ambitious nature, Ellesmere.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  If something were to happen which will not, then\u2014O\nPhilosophy, Philosophy, you, too, are a good old nurse, and rattle your\nrattles for your little people, as well as old Dame World can do for\nhers.  But what are we to have to-day for our first reading?\n\n_Milverton_.  An Essay on Truth.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, had I known this before, it is not the novelty of the\nsubject which would have dragged me up the hill to your house.  By the\nway, philosophers ought not to live upon hills.  They are much more\naccessible, and I think quite as reasonable, when, Diogenes-like, they\nlive in tubs upon flat ground.  Now for the essay.\n\n\n\nTRUTH.\n\n\nTruth is a subject which men will not suffer to grow old.  Each age has\nto fight with its own falsehoods: each man with his love of saying to\nhimself and those around him pleasant things and things serviceable for\nto-day, rather than the things which are.  Yet a child appreciates at\nonce the divine necessity for truth; never asks, \u201cWhat harm is there in\nsaying the thing that is not?\u201d and an old man finds, in his growing\nexperience, wider and wider applications of the great doctrine and\ndiscipline of truth.\n\nTruth needs the wisdom of the serpent as well as the simplicity of the\ndove.  He has gone but a little way in this matter who supposes that it\nis an easy thing for a man to speak the truth, \u201cthe thing he troweth;\u201d\nand that it is a casual function, which may be fulfilled at once after\nany lapse of exercise.  But, in the first place, the man who would speak\ntruth must know what he troweth.  To do that, he must have an uncorrupted\njudgment.  By this is not meant a perfect judgment or even a wise one,\nbut one which, however it may be biassed, is not bought\u2014is still a\njudgment.  But some people\u2019s judgments are so entirely gained over by\nvanity, selfishness, passion, or inflated prejudices and fancies long\nindulged in; or they have the habit of looking at everything so\ncarelessly, that they see nothing truly.  They cannot interpret the world\nof reality.  And this is the saddest form of lying, \u201cthe lie that sinketh\nin,\u201d as Bacon says, which becomes part of the character and goes on\neating the rest away.\n\nAgain, to speak truth, a man must not only have that martial courage\nwhich goes out, with sound of drum and trumpet, to do and suffer great\nthings; but that domestic courage which compels him to utter small\nsounding truths in spite of present inconvenience and outraged\nsensitiveness or sensibility.  Then he must not be in any respect a slave\nto self-interest.  Often it seems as if but a little misrepresentation\nwould gain a great good for us; or, perhaps, we have only to conceal some\ntrifling thing, which, if told, might hinder unreasonably, as we think, a\nprofitable bargain.  The true man takes care to tell, notwithstanding.\nWhen we think that truth interferes at one time or another with all a\nman\u2019s likings, hatings, and wishes, we must admit, I think, that it is\nthe most comprehensive and varied form of self-denial.\n\nThen, in addition to these great qualities, truth-telling in its highest\nsense requires a well-balanced mind.  For instance, much exaggeration,\nperhaps the most, is occasioned by an impatient and easily moved\ntemperament which longs to convey its own vivid impressions to other\nminds, and seeks by amplifying to gain the full measure of their\nsympathy.  But a true man does not think what his hearers are feeling,\nbut what he is saying.\n\nMore stress might be laid than has been on the intellectual requisites\nfor truth, which are probably the best part of intellectual cultivation;\nand as much caused by truth as causing it. {12}  But, putting the\nrequisites for truth at the fewest, see of how large a portion of the\ncharacter truth is the resultant.  If you were to make a list of those\npersons accounted the religious men of their respective ages, you would\nhave a ludicrous combination of characters essentially dissimilar.  But\ntrue people are kindred.  Mention the eminently true men, and you will\nfind that they are a brotherhood.  There is a family likeness throughout\nthem.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nIf we consider the occasions of exercising truthfulness and descend to\nparticulars, we may divide the matter into the following heads:\u2014truth to\noneself\u2014truth to mankind in general\u2014truth in social relations\u2014truth in\nbusiness\u2014truth in pleasure.\n\n1.  Truth to oneself.  All men have a deep interest that each man should\ntell himself the truth.  Not only will he become a better man, but he\nwill understand them better.  If men knew themselves, they could not be\nintolerant to others.\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to say much about the advantage of a man knowing\nhimself for himself.  To get at the truth of any history is good; but a\nman\u2019s own history\u2014when he reads that truly, and, without a mean and\nover-solicitous introspection, knows what he is about and what he has\nbeen about, it is a Bible to him.  \u201cAnd David said unto Nathan, I have\nsinned before the Lord.\u201d  David knew the truth about himself.  But truth\nto oneself is not merely truth about oneself.  It consists in maintaining\nan openness and justness of soul which brings a man into relation with\nall truth.  For this, all the senses, if you might so call them, of the\nsoul must be uninjured\u2014that is, the affections and the perceptions must\nbe just.  For a man to speak the truth to himself comprehends all\ngoodness; and for us mortals can only be an aim.\n\n2.  Truth to mankind in general.  This is a matter which, as I read it,\nconcerns only the higher natures.  Suffice it to say, that the\nwithholding large truths from the world may be a betrayal of the greatest\ntrust.\n\n3.  Truth in social relations.  Under this head come the practices of\nmaking speech vary according to the person spoken to; of pretending to\nagree with the world when you do not; of not acting according to what is\nyour deliberate and well-advised opinion because some mischief may be\nmade of it by persons whose judgment in this matter you do not respect;\nof maintaining a wrong course for the sake of consistency; of encouraging\nthe show of intimacy with those whom you never can be intimate with; and\nmany things of the same kind.  These practices have elements of charity\nand prudence as well as fear and meanness in them.  Let those parts which\ncorrespond to fear and meanness be put aside.  Charity and prudence are\nnot parasitical plants which require boles of falsehood to climb up upon.\nIt is often extremely difficult in the mixed things of this world to act\ntruly and kindly too; but therein lies one of the great trials of man,\nthat his sincerity should have kindness in it, and his kindness truth.\n\n4.  Truth in business.  The more truth you can get into any business, the\nbetter.  Let the other side know the defects of yours, let them know how\nyou are to be satisfied, let there be as little to be found as possible\n(I should say nothing), and if your business be an honest one, it will be\nbest tended in this way.  The talking, bargaining, and delaying that\nwould thus be needless, the little that would then have to be done over\nagain, the anxiety that would be put aside, would even in a worldly way\nbe \u201cgreat gain.\u201d  It is not, perhaps, too much to say, that the third\npart of men\u2019s lives is wasted by the effect, direct or indirect, of\nfalsehoods.\n\nStill, let us not be swift to imagine that lies are never of any service.\nA recent Prime Minister said, that he did not know about truth always\nprevailing and the like; but lies had been very successful against his\ngovernment.  And this was true enough.  Every lie has its day.  There is\nno preternatural inefficacy in it by reason of its falseness.  And this\nis especially the case with those vague injurious reports which are no\nman\u2019s lies, but all men\u2019s carelessness.  But even as regards special and\nunmistakable falsehood, we must admit that it has its success.  A\ncomplete being might deceive with wonderful effect; however, as nature is\nalways against a liar, it is great odds in the case of ordinary mortals.\nWolsey talks of\n\n                      \u201cNegligence\n    Fit for a fool to fall by,\u201d\n\nwhen he gives Henry the wrong packet; but the Cardinal was quite\nmistaken.  That kind of negligence was just the thing of which far-seeing\nand thoughtful men are capable; and which, if there were no higher\nmotive, should induce them to rely on truth alone.  A very close vulpine\nnature, all eyes, all ears, may succeed better in deceit.  But it is a\nsleepless business.  Yet, strange to say, it is had recourse to in the\nmost spendthrift fashion, as the first and easiest thing that comes to\nhand.\n\nIn connection with truth in business, it may be observed that if you are\na truthful man, you should be watchful over those whom you employ; for\nyour subordinate agents are often fond of lying for your interests, as\nthey think.  Show them at once that you do not think with them, and that\nyou will disconcert any of their inventions by breaking in with the\ntruth.  If you suffer the fear of seeming unkind to prevent your\nthrusting well-meant inventions aside, you may get as much pledged to\nfalsehoods as if you had coined and uttered them yourself.\n\n5.  Truth in pleasure.  Men have been said to be sincere in their\npleasures; but this is only that the taste and habits of men are more\neasily discernible in pleasure than in business.  The want of truth is as\ngreat a hindrance to the one as to the other.  Indeed, there is so much\ninsincerity and formality in the pleasurable department of human life,\nespecially in social pleasures, that instead of a bloom there is a slime\nupon it, which deadens and corrupts the thing.  One of the most comical\nsights to superior beings must be to see two human creatures with\nelaborate speech and gestures making each other exquisitely uncomfortable\nfrom civility: the one pressing what he is most anxious that the other\nshould not accept, and the other accepting only from the fear of giving\noffence by refusal.  There is an element of charity in all this too; and\nit will be the business of a just and refined nature to be sincere and\nconsiderate at the same time.  This will be better done by enlarging our\nsympathy, so that more things and people are pleasant to us, than by\nincreasing the civil and conventional part of our nature, so that we are\nable to do more seeming with greater skill and endurance.  Of other false\nhindrances to pleasure, such as ostentation and pretences of all kinds,\nthere is neither charity nor comfort in them.  They may be got rid of\naltogether, and no moaning made over them.  Truth, which is one of the\nlargest creatures, opens out the way to the heights of enjoyment, as well\nas to the depths of self-denial.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nIt is difficult to think too highly of the merits and delights of truth;\nbut there is often in men\u2019s minds an exaggerated notion of some bit of\ntruth, which proves a great assistance to falsehood.  For instance, the\nshame of some particular small falsehood, exaggeration, or insincerity,\nbecomes a bugbear which scares a man into a career of false dealing.  He\nhas begun making a furrow a little out of the line, and he ploughs on in\nit to try and give some consistency and meaning to it.  He wants almost\nto persuade himself that it was not wrong, and entirely to hide the\nwrongness from others.  This is a tribute to the majesty of truth; also\nto the world\u2019s opinion about truth.  It proceeds, too, upon the notion\nthat all falsehoods are equal, which is not the case; or on some fond\ncraving for a show of perfection, which is sometimes very inimical to the\nreality.  The practical, as well as the high-minded, view in such cases,\nis for a man to think how he can be true now.  To attain that, it may,\neven for this world, be worth while for a man to admit that he is\ninconsistent, and even that he has been untrue.  His hearers, did they\nknow anything of themselves, would be fully aware that he was not\nsingular, except in the courage of owning his insincerity.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_.  That last part requires thinking about.  If you were to\npermit men, without great loss of reputation, to own that they had been\ninsincere, you might break down some of that majesty of truth you talk\nabout.  And bad men might avail themselves of any facilities of owning\ninsincerity, to commit more of it.  I can imagine that the apprehension\nof this might restrain a man from making any such admission as you allude\nto, even if he could make up his mind to do it otherwise.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes; but can anything be worse than a man going on in a\nfalse course?  Each man must look to his own truthfulness, and keep that\nup as well as he can, even at the risk of saying, or doing, something\nwhich may be turned to ill account by others.  We may think too much\nabout this reflection of our external selves.  Let the real self be\nright.  I am not so fanciful as to expect men to go about clamouring that\nthey have been false; but at no risk of letting people see that, or of\neven being obliged to own it, should they persevere in it.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Milverton is right, I think.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Do not imagine that I am behind either of you in a wish to\nhold up truth.  My only doubt was as to the mode.  For my own part, I\nhave such faith in truth that I take it mere concealment is in most cases\na mischief.  And I should say, for instance, that a wise man would be\nsorry that his fellows should think better of him than he deserves.  By\nthe way, that is a reason why I should not like to be a writer of moral\nessays, Milverton\u2014one should be supposed to be so very good.\n\n_Milverton_.  Only by thoughtless people then.  There is a saying given\nto Rousseau, not that he ever did say it, for I believe it was a\nmisprint, but it was a possible saying for him, \u201cChaque homme qui pense\nest m\u00e9chant.\u201d  Now, without going the length of this aphorism, we may say\nthat what has been well written has been well suffered.\n\n    \u201cHe best can paint them who has felt them most.\u201d\n\nAnd so, though we should not exactly declare that writers who have had\nmuch moral influence have been wicked men, yet we may admit that they\nhave been amongst the most struggling, which implies anything but serene\nself-possession and perfect spotlessness.  If you take the great ones,\nLuther, Shakespeare, Goethe, you see this at once.\n\n_Dunsford_.  David, St. Paul.\n\n_Milverton_.  Such men are like great rocks on the seashore.  By their\nresistance, terraces of level land are formed; but the rocks themselves\nbear many scars and ugly indents, while the sea of human difficulty\npresents the same unwrinkled appearance in all ages.  Yet it has been\ndriven back.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  But has it lost any of its bulk, or only gone elsewhere?\nOne part of the resemblance certainly is that these same rocks, which\nwere bulwarks, become, in their turn, dangers.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes, there is always loss in that way.  It is seldom given\nto man to do unmixed good.  But it was not this aspect of the simile that\nI was thinking of: it was the scarred appearance.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Scars not always of defeat or flight; scars in the front.\n\n_Milverton_.  Ah, it hardly does for us to talk of victory or defeat, in\nthese cases; but we may look at the contest itself as something not bad,\nterminate how it may.  We lament over a man\u2019s sorrows, struggles,\ndisasters, and shortcomings; yet they were possessions too.  We talk of\nthe origin of evil and the permission of evil.  But what is evil?  We\nmostly speak of sufferings and trials as good, perhaps, in their result;\nbut we hardly admit that they may be good in themselves.  Yet they are\nknowledge\u2014how else to be acquired, unless by making men as gods, enabling\nthem to understand without experience.  All that men go through may be\nabsolutely the best for them\u2014no such thing as evil, at least in our\ncustomary meaning of the word.  But, you will say, they might have been\ncreated different and higher.  See where this leads to.  Any sentient\nbeing may set up the same claim: a fly that it had not been made a man;\nand so the end would be that each would complain of not being all.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Say it all over again, my dear Milverton: it is rather\nhard.  [Milverton did so, in nearly the same words.]  I think I have\nheard it all before.  But you may have it as you please.  I do not say\nthis irreverently, but the truth is, I am too old and too earthly to\nenter upon these subjects.  I think, however, that the view is a\nstout-hearted one.  It is somewhat in the same vein of thought that you\nsee in Carlyle\u2019s works about the contempt of happiness.  But in all these\ncases, one is apt to think of the sage in \u201cRasselas,\u201d who is very wise\nabout human misery till he loses his daughter.  Your fly illustration has\nsomething in it.  Certainly when men talk big about what might have been\ndone for man, they omit to think what might be said, on similar grounds,\nfor each sentient creature in the universe.  But here have we been\nmeandering off into origin of evil, and uses of great men, and wickedness\nof writers, etc., whereas I meant to have said something about the essay.\nHow would you answer what Bacon maintains?  \u201cA mixture of a lie doth ever\nadd pleasure.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  He is not speaking of the lies of social life, but of\nself-deception.  He goes on to class under that head \u201cvain opinions,\nflattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would.\u201d  These\nthings are the sweetness of \u201cthe lie that sinketh in.\u201d  Many a man has a\nkind of mental kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own\nmerits and fortunes, and they fall into harmonious arrangements and\ndelight him\u2014often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment, but\nthey are a present pleasure.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, I am going to be true in my pleasures: to take a long\nwalk alone.  I have got a difficult case for an opinion, which I must go\nand think over.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Shall we have another reading tomorrow?\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes, if you are both in the humour for it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\n\nAS the next day was fine, we agreed to have our reading in the same spot\nthat I have described before.  There was scarcely any conversation worth\nnoting, until after Milverton had read us the following essay on\nConformity.\n\n\n\nCONFORMITY.\n\n\nThe conformity of men is often a far poorer thing than that which\nresembles it amongst the lower animals.  The monkey imitates from\nimitative skill and gamesomeness: the sheep is gregarious, having no\nsufficient will to form an independent project of its own.  But man often\nloathes what he imitates, and conforms to what he knows to be wrong.\n\nIt will ever be one of the nicest problems for a man to solve how far he\nshall profit by the thoughts of other men, and not be enslaved by them.\nHe comes into the world, and finds swaddling clothes ready for his mind\nas well as his body.  There is a vast scheme of social machinery set up\nabout him; and he has to discern how he can make it work with him and for\nhim, without becoming part of the machinery himself.  In this lie the\nanguish and the struggle of the greatest minds.  Most sad are they,\nhaving mostly the deepest sympathies, when they find themselves breaking\noff from communion with other minds.  They would go on, if they could,\nwith the opinions around them.  But, happily, there is something to which\na man owes a larger allegiance than to any human affection.  He would be\ncontent to go away from a false thing, or quietly to protest against it;\nbut in spite of him the strife in his heart breaks into burning utterance\nby word or deed.\n\nFew, however, are those who venture, even for the shortest time, into\nthat hazy world of independent thought, where a man is not upheld by a\ncrowd of other men\u2019s opinions, but where he must find a footing of his\nown.  Among the mass of men, there is little or no resistance to\nconformity.  Could the history of opinions be fully written, it would be\nseen how large a part in human proceedings the love of conformity, or\nrather the fear of non-conformity, has occasioned.  It has triumphed over\nall other fears; over love, hate, pity, sloth, anger, truth, pride,\ncomfort, self-interest, vanity, and maternal love.  It has torn down the\nsense of beauty in the human soul, and set up in its place little ugly\nidols which it compels us to worship with more than Japanese devotion.\nIt has contradicted Nature in the most obvious things, and been listened\nto with abject submission.  Its empire has been no less extensive than\ndeep-seated.  The serf to custom points his finger at the slave to\nfashion\u2014as if it signified whether it is an old or a new thing which is\nirrationally conformed to.  The man of letters despises both the slaves\nof fashion and of custom, but often runs his narrow career of thought,\nshut up, though he sees it not, within close walls which he does not\nventure even to peep over.\n\nIt is hard to say in what department of human thought and endeavour\nconformity has triumphed most.  Religion comes to one\u2019s mind first; and\nwell it may when one thinks what men have conformed to in all ages in\nthat matter.  If we pass to art, or science, we shall see there too the\nwondrous slavery which men have endured\u2014from puny fetters, moreover,\nwhich one stirring thought would, as we think, have burst asunder.  The\nabove, however, are matters not within every one\u2019s cognisance; some of\nthem are shut in by learning or the show of it; and plain \u201cpractical\u201d men\nwould say, they follow where they have no business but to follow.  But\nthe way in which the human body shall be covered is not a thing for the\nscientific and the learned only: and is allowed on all hands to concern,\nin no small degree, one half at least of the creation.  It is in such a\nsimple thing as dress that each of us may form some estimate of the\nextent of conformity in the world.  A wise nation, unsubdued by\nsuperstition, with the collected experience of peaceful ages, concludes\nthat female feet are to be clothed by crushing them.  The still wiser\nnations of the west have adopted a swifter mode of destroying health, and\ncreating angularity, by crushing the upper part of the female body.  In\nsuch matters nearly all people conform.  Our brother man is seldom so\nbitter against us, as when we refuse to adopt at once his notions of the\ninfinite.  But even religious dissent were less dangerous and more\nrespectable than dissent in dress.  If you want to see what men will do\nin the way of conformity, take a European hat for your subject of\nmeditation.  I dare say there are twenty-two millions of people at this\nminute each wearing one of these hats in order to please the rest.  As in\nthe fine arts, and in architecture, especially, so in dress, something is\noften retained that was useful when something else was beside it.  To go\nto architecture for an instance, a pinnacle is retained, not that it is\nof any use where it is, but in another kind of building it would have\nbeen.  That style of building, as a whole, has gone out of fashion, but\nthe pinnacle has somehow or other kept its ground and must be there, no\none insolently going back to first principles and asking what is the use\nand object of building pinnacles.  Similar instances in dress will occur\nto my readers.  Some of us are not skilled in such affairs; but looking\nat old pictures we may sometimes see how modern clothes have attained\ntheir present pitch of frightfulness and inconvenience.  This matter of\ndress is one in which, perhaps, you might expect the wise to conform to\nthe foolish; and they have.\n\nWhen we have once come to a right estimate of the strength of conformity,\nwe shall, I think, be more kindly disposed to eccentricity than we\nusually are.  Even a wilful or an absurd eccentricity is some support\nagainst the weighty common-place conformity of the world.  If it were not\nfor some singular people who persist in thinking for themselves, in\nseeing for themselves, and in being comfortable, we should all collapse\ninto a hideous uniformity.\n\nIt is worth while to analyse that influence of the world which is the\nright arm of conformity.  Some persons bend to the world in all things,\nfrom an innocent belief that what so many people think must be right.\nOthers have a vague fear of the world as of some wild beast which may\nspring out upon them at any time.  Tell them they are safe in their\nhouses from this myriad-eyed creature: they still are sure that they\nshall meet with it some day, and would propitiate its favour at any\nsacrifice.  Many men contract their idea of the world to their own\ncircle, and what they imagine to be said in that circle of friends and\nacquaintances is their idea of public opinion\u2014\u201cas if,\u201d to use a saying of\nSouthey\u2019s, \u201ca number of worldlings made a world.\u201d  With some unfortunate\npeople, the much dreaded \u201cworld\u201d shrinks into one person of more mental\npower than their own, or perhaps merely of coarser nature; and the fancy\nas to what this person will say about anything they do, sits upon them\nlike a nightmare.  Happy the man who can embark his small adventure of\ndeeds and thoughts upon the shallow waters round his home, or send them\nafloat on the wide sea of humanity, with no great anxiety in either case\nas to what reception they may meet with!  He would have them steer by the\nstars, and take what wind may come to them.\n\nA reasonable watchfulness against conformity will not lead a man to spurn\nthe aid of other men, still less to reject the accumulated mental capital\nof ages.  It does not compel us to dote upon the advantages of savage\nlife.  We would not forego the hard-earned gains of civil society because\nthere is something in most of them which tends to contract the natural\npowers, although it vastly aids them.  We would not, for instance, return\nto the monosyllabic utterance of barbarous men, because in any formed\nlanguage there are a thousand snares for the understanding.  Yet we must\nbe most watchful of them.  And in all things, a man must beware of so\nconforming himself as to crush his nature and forego the purpose of his\nbeing.  We must look to other standards than what men may say or think.\nWe must not abjectly bow down before rules and usages; but must refer to\nprinciples and purposes.  In few words, we must think, not whom we are\nfollowing, but what we are doing.  If not, why are we gifted with\nindividual life at all?  Uniformity does not consist with the higher\nforms of vitality.  Even the leaves of the same tree are said to differ,\neach one from all the rest.  And can it be good for the soul of a man\n\u201cwith a biography of his own like to no one else\u2019s,\u201d to subject itself\nwithout thought to the opinions and ways of others: not to grow into\nsymmetry, but to be moulded down into conformity?\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, I rather like that essay.  I was afraid, at first, it\nwas going to have more of the fault into which you essay writers\ngenerally fall, of being a comment on the abuse of a thing, and not on\nthe thing itself.  There always seems to me to want another essay on the\nother side.  But I think, at the end, you protect yourself against\nmisconstruction.  In the spirit of the essay, you know, of course, that I\nquite agree with you.  Indeed, I differ from all the ordinary biographers\nof that independent gentleman, Don\u2019t Care.  I believe Don\u2019t Care came to\na good end.  At any rate he came to some end.  Whereas numbers of people\nnever have beginning, or ending, of their own.  An obscure dramatist,\nMilverton, whom we know of, makes one of his characters say, in reply to\nsome world-fearing wretch:\n\n                   \u201cWhile you, you think\n    What others think, or what you think they\u2019ll say,\n    Shaping your course by something scarce more tangible\n    Than dreams, at best the shadows on the stream\n    Of aspen leaves by flickering breezes swayed\u2014\n    Load me with irons, drive me from morn till night,\n    I am not the utter slave which that man is\n    Whose sole word, thought, and deed are built on what\n    The world may say of him.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  Never mind the obscure dramatist.  But, Ellesmere, you\nreally are unreasonable, if you suppose that, in the limits of a short\nessay, you can accurately distinguish all you write between the use and\nthe abuse of a thing.  The question is, will people misunderstand\nyou\u2014not, is the language such as to be logically impregnable?  Now, in\nthe present case, no man will really suppose it is a wise and just\nconformity that I am inveighing against.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I am not sure of that.  If everybody is to have independent\nthought, would there not be a fearful instability and want of\ncompactness?  Another thing, too\u2014conformity often saves so much time and\ntrouble.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes; it has its uses.  I do not mean, in the world of\nopinion and morality, that it should be all elasticity and no\ngravitation; but at least enough elasticity to preserve natural form and\nindependent being.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I think it would have been better if you had turned the\nessay another way, and instead of making it on conformity, had made it on\ninterference.  That is the greater mischief and the greater folly, I\nthink.  Why do people unreasonably conform?  Because they feel\nunreasonable interference.  War, I say, is interference on a small scale\ncompared with the interference of private life.  Then the absurdity on\nwhich it proceeds; that men are all alike, or that it is desirable that\nthey should be; and that what is good for one is good for all.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I must say, I think, Milverton, you do not give enough\ncredit for sympathy, good-nature, and humility as material elements in\nthe conformity of the world.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I am not afraid, my dear Dunsford, of the essay doing much\nharm.  There is a power of sleepy conformity in the world.  You may just\nstartle your conformists for a minute, but they gravitate into their old\nway very soon.  You talk of their humility, Dunsford, but I have heard\npeople who have conformed to opinions, without a pretence of\ninvestigation, as arrogant and intolerant towards anybody who differed\nfrom them, as if they stood upon a pinnacle of independent sagacity and\nresearch.\n\n_Dunsford_.  One never knows, Ellesmere, on which side you are.  I\nthought you were on mine a minute or two ago; and now you come down upon\nme with more than Milverton\u2019s anti-conforming spirit.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  The greatest mischief, as I take it, of this slavish\nconformity, is in the reticence it creates.  People will be, what are\ncalled, intimate friends, and yet no real interchange of opinion takes\nplace between them.  A man keeps his doubts, his difficulties, and his\npeculiar opinions to himself.  He is afraid of letting anybody know that\nhe does not exactly agree with the world\u2019s theories on all points.  There\nis no telling the hindrance that this is to truth.\n\n_Milverton_.  A great cause of this, Ellesmere, is in the little reliance\nyou can have on any man\u2019s secrecy.  A man finds that what, in the heat of\ndiscussion, and in the perfect carelessness of friendship, he has said to\nhis friend, is quoted to people whom he would never have said it to;\nknowing that it would be sure to be misunderstood, or half-understood, by\nthem.  And so he grows cautious; and is very loth to communicate to\nanybody his more cherished opinions, unless they fall in exactly with the\nstream.  Added to which, I think there is in these times less than there\never was of a proselytising spirit; and people are content to keep their\nopinions to themselves\u2014more perhaps from indifference than from fear.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes, I agree with you.\n\nBy the way, I think your taking dress as an illustration of extreme\nconformity is not bad.  Really it is wonderful the degree of square and\ndull hideousness to which, in the process of time and tailoring, and by\nsevere conformity, the human creature\u2019s outward appearance has arrived.\nLook at a crowd of men from a height, what an ugly set of ants they\nappear!  Myself, when I see an Eastern man, one of the people attached to\ntheir embassies, sweeping by us in something flowing and stately, I feel\ninclined to take off my hat to him (only that I think the hat might\nfrighten him), and say, Here is a great, unhatted, uncravated, bearded\nman, not a creature clipt and twisted and tortured into tailorhood.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Ellesmere broke in upon me just now, so that I did not say\nall that I meant to say.  But, Milverton, what would you admit that we\nare to conform to?  In silencing the general voice, may we not give too\nmuch opportunity to our own headstrong suggestions, and to wilful\nlicence?\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes: to be somewhat deaf to the din of the world may be no\ngain, even loss, if then we only listen more to the worst part of\nourselves; but in itself it is a good thing to silence that din.  It is\nat least a beginning of good.  If anything good is then gained, it is not\na sheepish tendency, but an independent resolve growing out of our\nnature.  And, after all, when we talk of non-conformity, it may only be\nthat we non-conform to the immediate sect of thought or action about us,\nto conform to a much wider thing in human nature.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Ah me! how one wants a moral essayist always at hand to\nenable one to make use of moral essays.\n\n_Milverton_.  Your rules of law are grand things\u2014the proverbs of justice;\nyet has not each case its specialities, requiring to be argued with much\ncircumstance, and capable of different interpretations?  Words cannot be\nmade into men.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I wonder you answer his sneers, Milverton.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I must go and see whether words cannot be made into\nguineas: and then guineas into men is an easy thing.  These trains will\nnot wait even for critics, so, for the present, good-bye.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\n\nELLESMERE soon wrote us word that he would be able to come down again;\nand I agreed to be at Worth-Ashton (Milverton\u2019s house) on the day of his\narrival.  I had scarcely seated myself at our usual place of meeting\nbefore the friends entered, and after greeting me, the conversation thus\nbegan:\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Upon my word, you people who live in the country have a\npleasant time of it.  As Milverton was driving me from the station\nthrough Durley Wood, there was such a rich smell of pines, such a\ntwittering of birds, so much joy, sunshine, and beauty, that I began to\nthink, if there were no such place as London, it really would be very\ndesirable to live in the country.\n\n_Milverton_.  What a climax!  But I am always very suspicious, when\nEllesmere appears to be carried away by any enthusiasm, that it will\nbreak off suddenly, like the gallop of a post-horse.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, what are we to have for our essay!\n\n_Milverton_.  Despair.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I feel equal to anything just now, and so, if it must be\nread sometime or other, let us have it now.\n\n_Milverton_.  You need not be afraid.  I want to take away, not to add\ngloom.  Shall I read?\n\nWe assented, and he began.\n\n\n\nDESPAIR.\n\n\nDespair may be serviceable when it arises from a temporary prostration of\nspirits: during which the mind is insensibly healing, and her scattered\npower silently returning.  This is better than to be the sport of a\nteasing hope without reason.  But to indulge in despair as a habit is\nslothful, cowardly, short-sighted; and manifestly tends against Nature.\nDespair is then the paralysis of the soul.\n\nThese are the principal causes of despair\u2014remorse, the sorrows of the\naffections, worldly trouble, morbid views of religion, native melancholy.\n\n\n\nREMORSE.\n\n\nRemorse does but add to the evil which bred it, when it promotes, not\npenitence, but despair.  To have erred in one branch of our duties does\nnot unfit us for the performance of all the rest, unless we suffer the\ndark spot to spread over our whole nature, which may happen almost\nunobserved in the torpor of despair.  This kind of despair is chiefly\ngrounded on a foolish belief that individual words or actions constitute\nthe whole life of man: whereas they are often not fair representatives of\nportions even of that life.  The fragments of rock in a mountain stream\nmay tell much of its history, are in fact results of its doings, but they\nare not the stream.  They were brought down when it was turbid; it may\nnow be clear: they are as much the result of other circumstances as of\nthe action of the stream; their history is fitful: they give us no sure\nintelligence of the future course of the stream, or of the nature of its\nwaters; and may scarcely show more than that it has not been always as it\nis.  The actions of men are often but little better indications of the\nmen themselves.\n\nA prolonged despair arising from remorse is unreasonable at any age, but\nif possible, still more so when felt by the young.  To think, for\nexample, that the great Being who made us could have made eternal ruin\nand misery inevitable to a poor half-fledged creature of eighteen or\nnineteen!  And yet how often has the profoundest despair from remorse\nbrooded over children of that age and eaten into their hearts.\n\nThere is frequently much selfishness about remorse.  Put what has been\ndone at the worst.  Let a man see his own evil word, or deed, in full\nlight, and own it to be black as hell itself.  He is still here.  He\ncannot be isolated.  There still remain for him cares and duties; and,\ntherefore, hopes.  Let him not in imagination link all creation to his\nfate.  Let him yet live in the welfare of others, and, if it may be so,\nwork out his own in this way: if not, be content with theirs.  The\nsaddest cause of remorseful despair is when a man does something\nexpressly contrary to his character: when an honourable man, for\ninstance, slides into some dishonourable action; or a tender-hearted man\nfalls into cruelty from carelessness; or, as often happens, a sensitive\nnature continues to give the greatest pain to others from temper, feeling\nall the time, perhaps, more deeply than the persons aggrieved.  All these\ncases may be summed up in the words, \u201cThat which I would not that I do,\u201d\nthe saddest of all human confessions, made by one of the greatest men.\nHowever, the evil cannot be mended by despair.  Hope and humility are the\nonly supports under this burden.  As Mr. Carlyle says,\n\n    \u201cWhat are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the\n    inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled,\n    never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten.  \u2018It is not in man that\n    walketh to direct his steps.\u2019  Of all acts, is not, for a man,\n    _repentance_ the most divine?  The deadliest sin, I say, were that\n    same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death: the heart\n    so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is dead:\n    it is \u2018pure\u2019 as dead dry sand is pure.  David\u2019s life and history, as\n    written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest\n    emblem ever given of a man\u2019s moral progress and warfare here below.\n    All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an\n    earnest human soul towards what is good and best.  Struggle often\n    baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle\n    never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable\n    purpose, begun anew.  Poor human nature! is not a man\u2019s walking, in\n    truth, always that: a \u2018succession of falls!\u2019  Man can do no other.\n    In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now\n    fallen, deep abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding\n    heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards.  That his\n    struggle be a faithful unconquerable one: this is the question of\n    questions.\u201d\n\n\n\nTHE SORROWS OF THE AFFECTIONS.\n\n\nThe loss by death of those we love has the first place in these sorrows.\nYet the feeling in this case, even when carried to the highest, is not\nexactly despair, having too much warmth in it for that.  Not much can be\nsaid in the way of comfort on this head.  Queen Elizabeth, in her hard,\nwise way, writing to a mother who had lost her son, tells her that she\nwill be comforted in time; and why should she not do for herself what the\nmere lapse of time will do for her?  Brave words! and the stern woman,\nmore earnest than the sage in \u201cRasselas,\u201d would have tried their virtue\non herself.  But I fear they fell somewhat coldly on the mother\u2019s ear.\nHappily, in these bereavements, kind Nature with her opiates, day by day\nadministered, does more than all the skill of the physician moralists.\nSir Thomas Browne says,\n\n    \u201cDarkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares\n    with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly\n    remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave\n    but short smart upon us.  Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows\n    destroy us or themselves.  To weep into stones are fables.\n    Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like\n    snow upon us, which, notwithstanding, is no unhappy stupidity.  To be\n    ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful\n    provision in Nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and\n    evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting\n    remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of\n    repetitions.\u201d\n\nThe good knight thus makes much comfort out of our physical weakness.\nBut something may be done in a very different direction, namely, by\nspiritual strength.  By elevating and purifying the sorrow, we may take\nit more out of matter, as it were, and so feel less the loss of what is\nmaterial about it.\n\nThe other sorrows of the affections which may produce despair, are those\nin which the affections are wounded, as jealousy, love unrequited,\nfriendship betrayed and the like.  As, in despair from remorse, the whole\nlife seems to be involved in one action: so in the despair we are now\nconsidering, the whole life appears to be shut up in the one unpropitious\naffection.  Yet human nature, if fairly treated, is too large a thing to\nbe suppressed into despair by one affection, however potent.  We might\nimagine that if there were anything that would rob life of its strength\nand favour, it is domestic unhappiness.  And yet how numerous is the bond\nof those whom we know to have been eminently unhappy in some domestic\nrelation, but whose lives have been full of vigorous and kindly action.\nIndeed the culture of the world has been largely carried on by such men.\nAs long as there is life in the plant, though it be sadly pent in, it\nwill grow towards any opening of light that is left for it.\n\n\n\nWORLDLY TROUBLE.\n\n\nThis appears too mean a subject for despair, or, at least, unworthy of\nhaving any remedy, or soothing thought out of it.  Whether a man lives in\na large room or a small one, rides or is obliged to walk, gets a\nplenteous dinner every day, or a sparing one, do not seem matters for\ndespair.  But the truth is, that worldly trouble, such for instance, as\nloss of fortune, is seldom the simple thing that poets would persuade us.\n\n    \u201cThe little or the much she gave is quietly resigned;\n    Content with poverty, my soul I arm,\n    And virtue, though in rags will keep me warm.\u201d\n\nSo sings Dryden, paraphrasing Horace, but each of them with their\nknowledge of the world, cross-questioned in prose, could have told us how\nthe stings of fortune really are felt.  The truth is, that fortune is not\nexactly a distinct isolated thing which can be taken away\u2014\u201cand there an\nend.\u201d  But much has to be severed, with undoubted pain in the operation.\nA man mostly feels that his reputation for sagacity, often his honour,\nthe comfort, too, or supposed comfort, of others are embarked in his\nfortunes.  Mere stoicism, and resolves about fitting fortune to oneself,\nnot oneself to fortune, though good things enough in their way, will not\nalways meet the whole of the case.  And a man who could bear personal\ndistress of any kind with Spartan indifference, may suffer himself to be\noverwhelmed by despair growing out of worldly trouble.  A frequent origin\nof such despair, as indeed of all despair (not by any means excluding\ndespair from remorse), is pride.  Let a man say to himself, \u201cI am not the\nperfect character I meant to be; this is not the conduct I had imagined\nfor myself; these are not the fortunate circumstances I had always\nintended to be surrounded by.\u201d  Let him at once admit that he is on a\nlower level than his ideal one; and then see what is to be done there.\nThis seems the best way of treating all that part of worldly trouble\nwhich consists of self-reproval.  We scarcely know of any outward life\ncontinuously prosperous (and a very dull one it would be): why should we\nexpect the inner life to be one course of unbroken self-improvement,\neither in prudence, or in virtue?\n\nBefore a man gives way to excessive grief about the fortunes of his\nfamily being lost with his own, he should think whether he really knows\nwherein lies the welfare of others.  Give him some fairy power,\ninexhaustible purses or magic lamps, not, however, applying to the mind;\nand see whether he could make those whom he would favour good or happy.\nIn the East, they have a proverb of this kind, Happy are the children of\nthose fathers who go to the Evil One.  But for anything that our Western\nexperience shows, the proverb might be reversed, and, instead of running\nthus, Happy are the sons of those who have got money anyhow, it might be,\nHappy are the sons of those who have failed in getting money.  In fact,\nthere is no sound proverb to be made about it either way.  We know\nnothing about the matter.  Our surest influence for good or evil over\nothers is, through themselves.  Our ignorance of what is physically good\nfor any man may surely prevent anything like despair with regard to that\npart of the fortunes of others dear to us, which, as we think, is bound\nup with our own.\n\n\n\nMORBID VIEWS OF RELIGION.\n\n\nAs religion is the most engrossing subject that can be presented to us,\nit will be considered in all states of mind and by all minds.  It is\nimpossible but that the most hideous and perverted views of religion must\narise.  To combat the particular views which may be supposed to cause\nreligious despair, would be too theological an undertaking for this\nessay.  One thing only occurs to me to say, namely, that the lives and\nthe mode of speaking about themselves adopted by the founders of\nChristianity, afford the best contradiction to religious melancholy that\nI believe can be met with.\n\n\n\nNATIVE MELANCHOLY.\n\n\nThere is such a thing.  Jacques, without the \u201csundry contemplation\u201d of\nhis travels, or any \u201csimples\u201d to \u201ccompound\u201d his melancholy form, would\nhave ever been wrapped in a \u201cmost humorous sadness.\u201d  It was innate.\nThis melancholy may lay its votaries open to any other cause of despair,\nbut having mostly some touch of philosophy (if it be not absolutely\nmorbid), it is not unlikely to preserve them from any extremity.  It is\nnot acute, but chronic.\n\nIt may be said in its favour that it tends to make men indifferent to\ntheir own fortunes.  But then the sorrow of the world presses more deeply\nupon them.  With large open hearts, the untowardness of things present,\nthe miseries of the past, the mischief, stupidity, and error which reign\nin the world, at times almost crush your melancholy men.  Still, out of\ntheir sadness may come their strength, or, at least, the best direction\nof it.  Nothing, perhaps, is lost; not even sin\u2014much less sorrow.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I am glad you have ended as you have: for, previously, you\nseemed to make too much of getting rid of all distress of mind.  I always\nliked that passage in \u201cPhilip van Artevelde,\u201d where Father John says,\n\n    \u201cHe that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.\n    Eternity mourns that.\u201d\n\nYou have a better memory than I have: how does it go on?\n\n_Milverton_.\n\n                            \u201c\u2019Tis an ill cure\n    For life\u2019s worst ills, to have no time to feel them.\n    Where sorrow\u2019s held intrusive and turned out,\n    There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,\n    Nor aught that dignifies humanity.\u201d\n\nStill this does not justify despair, which was what I was writing about.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Perhaps it was not a just criticism of mine.  One part of\nthe subject you have certainly omitted.  You do not tell us how much\nthere often is of physical disorder in despair.  I dare say you will\nthink it a coarse and unromantic mode of looking at things; but I must\nconfess I agree with what Leigh Hunt has said somewhere, that one can\nwalk down distress of mind\u2014even remorse, perhaps.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes; I am for the Peripatetics against all other\nphilosophers.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  By the way, there is a passage in one of Hazlitt\u2019s essays,\nI thought of while you were reading, about remorse and religious\nmelancholy.  He speaks of mixing up religion and morality; and then goes\non to say, that Calvinistic notions have obscured and prevented\nself-knowledge. {42}\n\nGive me the essay\u2014there is a passage I want to look at.  This comparison\nof life to a mountain stream, the rocks brought down by it being the\nactions, is too much worked out.  When we speak of similes not going on\nfour legs, it implies, I think, that a simile is at best but a\nfour-legged animal.  Now this is almost a centipede of a simile.  I think\nI have had the same thought as yours here, and I have compared the life\nof an individual to a curve.  You both smile.  Now I thought that\nDunsford at any rate would be pleased with this reminiscence of college\ndays.  But to proceed with my curve.  You may have numbers of the points\nthrough which it passes given, and yet know nothing of the nature of the\ncurve itself.  See, now, it shall pass through here and here, but how it\nwill go in the interval, what is the law of its being, we know not.  But\nthis simile would be too mathematical, I fear.\n\n_Milverton_.  I hold to the centipede.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Not a word has Dunsford said all this time.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I like the essay.  I was not criticising as we went along,\nbut thinking that perhaps the greatest charm of books is, that we see in\nthem that other men have suffered what we have.  Some souls we ever find\nwho could have responded to all our agony, be it what it may.  This at\nleast robs misery of its loneliness.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  On the other hand, the charm of intercourse with our\nfellows, when we are in sadness, is that they do not reflect it in any\nway.  Each keeps his own trouble to himself, and often pretending to\nthink and care about other things, comes to do so for the time.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, but you might choose books which would not reflect\nyour troubles.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  But the fact of having to make a choice to do this, does\naway, perhaps, with some part of the benefit: whereas, in intercourse\nwith living men, you take what you find, and you find that neither your\ntrouble, nor any likeness of it, is absorbing other people.  But this is\nnot the whole reason: the truth is, the life and impulses of other men\nare catching; you cannot explain exactly how it is that they take you out\nof yourself.\n\n_Milverton_.  No man is so confidential as when he is addressing the\nwhole world.  You find, therefore, more comfort for sorrow in books than\nin social intercourse.  I mean more direct comfort; for I agree with what\nEllesmere says about society.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  In comparing men and books, one must always remember this\nimportant distinction\u2014that one can put the books down at any time.  As\nMacaulay says, \u201cPlato is never sullen.  Cervantes is never petulant.\nDemosthenes never comes unseasonably.  Dante never stays too long.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  Besides, one can manage to agree so well, intellectually,\nwith a book; and intellectual differences are the source of half the\nquarrels in the world.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Judicious shelving!\n\n_Milverton_.  Judicious skipping will nearly do.  Now when one\u2019s friend,\nor oneself, is crotchety, dogmatic, or disputatious, one cannot turn over\nto another day.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Don\u2019t go, Dunsford.  Here is a passage in the essay I meant\nto have said something about\u2014\u201cwhy should we expect the inner life to be\none course of unbroken self-improvement,\u201d etc.\u2014You recollect?  Well, it\nputs me in mind of a conversation between a complacent poplar and a grim\nold oak, which I overheard the other day.  The poplar said that it grew\nup quite straight, heavenwards, that all its branches pointed the same\nway, and always had done so.  Turning to the oak, which it had been\ntalking at before for some time, the poplar went on to remark, that it\ndid not wish to say anything unfriendly to a brother of the forest, but\nthose warped and twisted branches seemed to show strange struggles.  The\ntall thing concluded its oration by saying, that it grew up very fast,\nand that when it had done growing, it did not suffer itself to be made\ninto huge floating engines of destruction.  But different trees had\ndifferent tastes.  There was then a sound from the old oak, like an \u201cah\u201d\nor a \u201cwhew,\u201d or, perhaps, it was only the wind amongst its resisting\nbranches; and the gaunt creature said that it had had ugly winds from\nwithout and cross-grained impulses from within; that it knew it had\nthrown out awkwardly a branch here and a branch there, which would never\ncome quite right again it feared; that men worked it up, sometimes for\ngood and sometimes for evil\u2014but that at any rate it had not lived for\nnothing.  The poplar began again immediately, for this kind of tree can\ntalk for ever, but I patted the old oak approvingly and went on.\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, your trees divide their discourse somewhat\nEllesmerically: they do not talk with the simplicity La Fontaine\u2019s would;\nbut there is a good deal in them.  They are not altogether sappy.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I really thought of this fable of mine the other day, as I\nwas passing the poplar at the end of the valley, and I determined to give\nit you on the first occasion.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I hope, Ellesmere, you do not intend to put sarcastic\nnotions into the sap of our trees hereabouts.  There\u2019s enough of sarcasm\nin you to season a whole forest.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Dunsford is afraid of what the trees may say to the country\ngentlemen, and whether they will be able to answer them.  I will be\ncareful not to make the trees too clever.\n\n_Milverton_.  Let us go and try if we can hear any more forest talk.  The\nwinds, shaped into voices by the leaves, say many things to us at all\ntimes.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\n\nIN the course of our walk Milverton promised to read the following essay\non Recreation the next day.  I have no note of anything that was said\nbefore the reading.\n\n\n\nRECREATION.\n\n\nThis subject has not had the thought it merits.  It seems trivial.  It\nconcerns some hours in the daily life of each of us; but it is not\nconnected with any subject of human grandeur, and we are rather ashamed\nof it.  Schiller has some wise, but hard words that relate to it.  He\nperceives the pre-eminence of the Greeks, who could do many things.  He\nfinds that modern men are units of great nations; but not great units\nthemselves.  And there is some room for this reasoning of his.\n\nOur modern system of division of labour divides wits also.  The more\nnecessity there is, therefore, for funding in recreation something to\nexpand men\u2019s intelligence.  There are intellectual pursuits almost as\nmuch divided as pin-making; and many a man goes through some intellectual\nprocess, for the greater part of his working hours, which corresponds\nwith the making of a pin\u2019s head.  Must there not be some danger of a\ngeneral contraction of mind from this convergence of attention upon\nsomething very small, for so considerable a portion of a man\u2019s life?\n\nWhat answer can civilisation give to this?  It can say that greater\nresults are worked out by the modern system; that though each man is\ndoing less himself than he might have done in former days, he sees\ngreater and better things accomplished; and that his thoughts, not bound\ndown by his petty occupation, travel over the work of the human family.\nThere is a great deal, doubtless, in this argument; but man is not\naltogether an intellectual recipient.  He is a constructive animal also.\nIt is not the knowledge that you can pour into him that will satisfy him,\nor enable him to work out his nature.  He must see things for himself; he\nmust have bodily work and intellectual work different from his\nbread-getting work; or he runs the danger of becoming a contracted pedant\nwith a poor mind and a sickly body.\n\nI have seen it quoted from Aristotle, that the end of labour is to gain\nleisure.  It is a great saying.  We have in modern times a totally wrong\nview of the matter.  Noble work is a noble thing, but not all work.  Most\npeople seem to think that any business is in itself something grand; that\nto be intensely employed, for instance, about something which has no\ntruth, beauty, or usefulness in it, which makes no man happier or wiser,\nis still the perfection of human endeavour, so that the work be intense.\nIt is the intensity, not the nature, of the work that men praise.  You\nsee the extent of this feeling in little things.  People are so ashamed\nof being caught for a moment idle, that if you come upon the most\nindustrious servants or workmen whilst they are standing looking at\nsomething which interests them, or fairly resting, they move off in a\nfright, as if they were proved, by a moment\u2019s relaxation, to be\nneglectful of their work.  Yet it is the result that they should mainly\nbe judged by, and to which they should appeal.  But amongst all classes,\nthe working itself, incessant working, is the thing deified.  Now what is\nthe end and object of most work?  To provide for animal wants.  Not a\ncontemptible thing by any means, but still it is not all in all with man.\nMoreover, in those cases where the pressure of bread-getting is fairly\npast, we do not often find men\u2019s exertions lessened on that account.\nThere enter into their minds as motives, ambition, a love of hoarding, or\na fear of leisure\u2014things which, in moderation, may be defended or even\njustified; but which are not so peremptory, and upon the face of them\nexcellent, that they at once dignify excessive labour.\n\nThe truth is, that to work insatiably requires much less mind than to\nwork judiciously, and less courage than to refuse work that cannot be\ndone honestly.  For a hundred men whose appetite for work can be driven\non by vanity, avarice, ambition, or a mistaken notion of advancing their\nfamilies, there is about one who is desirous of expanding his own nature\nand the nature of others in all directions, of cultivating many pursuits,\nof bringing himself and those around him in contact with the universe in\nmany points, of being a man and not a machine.\n\nIt may seem as if the preceding arguments were directed rather against\nexcessive work than in favour of recreation.  But the first object in an\nessay of this kind should be to bring down the absurd estimate that is\noften formed of mere work.  What ritual is to the formalist, or\ncontemplation to the devotee, business is to the man of the world.  He\nthinks he cannot be doing wrong as long as he is doing that.\n\nNo doubt hard work is a great police agent.  If everybody were worked\nfrom morning till night and then carefully locked up, the register of\ncrimes might be greatly diminished.  But what would become of human\nnature?  Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things?\nIt is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions,\ncircumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men\u2019s\nnatures are developed.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nAgain, there are people who would say, \u201cLabour is not all; we do not\nobject to the cessation of labour\u2014a mere provision for bodily ends; but\nwe fear the lightness and vanity of what you call recreation.\u201d  Do these\npeople take heed of the swiftness of thought\u2014of the impatience of\nthought?  What will the great mass of men be thinking of, if they are\ntaught to shun amusements and the thoughts of amusement?  If any\nsensuality is left open to them, they will think of that.  If not\nsensuality, then avarice, or ferocity for \u201cthe cause of God,\u201d as they\nwould call it.  People who have had nothing else to amuse them have been\nvery apt to indulge themselves in the excitement of persecuting their\nfellow creatures.\n\nOur nation, the northern part of it especially, is given to believe in\nthe sovereign efficacy of dulness.  To be sure, dulness and solid vice\nare apt to go hand in hand.  But then, according to our notions, dulness\nis in itself so good a thing\u2014almost a religion.\n\nNow, if ever a people required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted\nAnglo-Saxons.  Heavy eaters, hard thinkers, often given up to a peculiar\nmelancholy of our own, with a climate that for months together would\nfrown away mirth if it could\u2014many of us with very gloomy thoughts about\nour hereafter\u2014if ever there were a people who should avoid increasing\ntheir dulness by all work and no play, we are that people.  \u201cThey took\ntheir pleasure sadly,\u201d says Froissart, \u201cafter their fashion.\u201d  We need\nnot ask of what nation Froissart was speaking.\n\nThere is a theory which has done singular mischief to the cause of\nrecreation and of general cultivation.  It is that men cannot excel in\nmore things than one; and that if they can, they had better be quiet\nabout it.  \u201cAvoid music, do not cultivate art, be not known to excel in\nany craft but your own,\u201d says many a worldly parent, thereby laying the\nfoundation of a narrow, greedy character, and destroying means of\nhappiness and of improvement which success, or even real excellence, in\none profession only cannot give.  This is, indeed, a sacrifice of the end\nof living for the means.\n\nAnother check to recreation is the narrow way in which people have\nhitherto been brought up at schools and colleges.  The classics are\npre-eminent works.  To acquire an accurate knowledge of them is an\nadmirable discipline.  Still, it would be well to give a youth but few of\nthese great works, and so leave time for various arts, accomplishments,\nand knowledge of external things exemplified by other means than books.\nIf this cannot be done but by over-working, then it had better not be\ndone; for of all things, that must be avoided.  But surely it can be\ndone.  At present, many a man who is versed in Greek metre, and\nafterwards full of law reports, is childishly ignorant of Nature.  Let\nhim walk with an intelligent child for a morning, and the child will ask\nhim a hundred questions about sun, moon, stars, plants, birds, building,\nfarming, and the like, to which he can give very sorry answers, if any;\nor, at the best, he has but a second-hand acquaintance with Nature.\nMen\u2019s conceits are his main knowledge.  Whereas, if he had any pursuits\nconnected with Nature, all Nature is in harmony with it, is brought into\nhis presence by it, and it affords at once cultivation and recreation.\n\nBut, independently of those cultivated pursuits which form a high order\nof recreation, boyhood should never pass without the boy\u2019s learning\nseveral modes of recreation of the humbler kind.  A parent or teacher\nseldom does a kinder thing by the child under his care than when he\ninstructs it in some manly exercise, some pursuit connected with Nature\nout of doors, or even some domestic game.  In hours of fatigue, anxiety,\nsickness, or worldly ferment, such means of amusement may delight the\ngrown-up man when other things would fail.\n\nAn indirect advantage, but a very considerable one, attendant upon\nvarious modes of recreation, is, that they provide opportunities of\nexcelling in something to boys and men who are dull in things which form\nthe staple of education.  A boy cannot see much difference between the\nnominative and the genitive cases\u2014still less any occasion for aorists\u2014but\nhe is a good hand at some game or other; and he keeps up his\nself-respect, and the respect of others for him, upon his prowess in that\ngame.  He is better and happier on that account.  And it is well, too,\nthat the little world around him should know that excellence is not all\nof one form.\n\nThere are no details about recreation in this essay, the object here\nbeing mainly to show the worth of recreation, and to defend it against\nobjections from the over-busy and the over-strict.  The sense of the\nbeautiful, the desire for comprehending Nature, the love of personal\nskill and prowess, are not things implanted in men merely to be absorbed\nin producing and distributing the objects of our most obvious animal\nwants.  If civilisation required this, civilisation would be a failure.\nStill less should we fancy that we are serving the cause of godliness\nwhen we are discouraging recreation.  Let us be hearty in our pleasures,\nas in our work, and not think that the gracious Being Who has made us so\nopen-hearted to delight, looks with dissatisfaction at our enjoyment, as\na hard taskmaster might, who in the glee of his slaves could see only a\nhindrance to their profitable working.  And with reference to our\nindividual cultivation, we may remember that we are not here to promote\nincalculable quantities of law, physic, or manufactured goods, but to\nbecome men\u2014not narrow pedants, but wide-seeing, mind-travelled men.  Who\nare the men of history to be admired most?  Those whom most things\nbecame\u2014who could be weighty in debate, of much device in council,\nconsiderate in a sick-room, genial at a feast, joyous at a festival,\ncapable of discourse with many minds, large-souled, not to be shrivelled\nup into any one form, fashion, or temperament.  Their contemporaries\nwould have told us that men might have various accomplishments and hearty\nenjoyments, and not for that be the less effective in business, or less\nactive in benevolence.  I distrust the wisdom of asceticism as much as I\ndo that of sensuality; Simeon Stylites no less than Sardanapalus.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You alluded to Schiller at the beginning of the essay: can\nyou show me his own words?  I have a lawyer\u2019s liking for the best\nevidence.\n\n_Milverton_.  When we go in, I will show you some passages which bear me\nout in what I have made him say\u2014at least, if the translation is faithful.\n{53}\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I have had a great respect for Schiller ever since I heard\nthat saying of his about death, \u201cDeath cannot be an evil, for it is\nuniversal.\u201d\n\n_Dunsford_.  Very noble and full of faith.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Touching the essay, I like it well enough; but, perhaps,\npeople will expect to find more about recreation itself\u2014not only about\nthe good of it, but what it is, and how it is to be got.\n\n_Milverton_.  I do not incline to go into detail about the matter.  The\nobject was to say something for the respectability of recreation, not to\nwrite a chapter of a book of sports.  People must find out their own ways\nof amusing themselves.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I will tell you what is the paramount thing to be attended\nto in all amusements\u2014that they should be short.  Moralists are always\ntalking about \u201cshort-lived\u201d pleasures: would that they were!\n\n_Dunsford_.  Hesiod told the world, some two thousand years ago, how much\ngreater the half is than the whole.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Dinner-givers and managers of theatres should forthwith be\nmade aware of that fact.  What a sacrifice of good things, and of the\npatience and comfort of human beings, a cumbrous modern dinner is!  I\nalways long to get up and walk about.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Do not talk of modern dinners.  Think what a Roman dinner\nmust have been.\n\n_Milverton_.  Very true.  It has always struck me that there is something\nquite military in the sensualism of the Romans\u2014an \u201carbiter bibendi\u201d\nchosen, and the whole feast moving on with fearful precision and\napparatus of all kinds.  Come, come! the world\u2019s improving, Ellesmere.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Had the Romans public dinners?  Answer me that.  Imagine a\nRoman, whose theory, at least, of a dinner was that it was a thing for\nenjoyment, whereas we often look on it as a continuation of the business\nof the day\u2014I say, imagine a Roman girding himself up, literally girding\nhimself up to make an after-dinner speech.\n\n_Milverton_.  I must allow that is rather a barbarous practice.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  If charity, or politics, cannot be done without such\nthings, I suppose they are useful in their way; but let nobody ever\nimagine that they are a form of pleasure.  People smearing each other\nover with stupid flattery, and most of the company being in dread of\nreceiving some compliment which should oblige them to speak!\n\n_Dunsford_.  I should have thought, now, that you would always have had\nsomething to say, and therefore that you would not be so bitter against\nafter-dinner speaking.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  No; when I have nothing to say, I can say nothing.\n\n_Milverton_.  Would it not be a pleasant thing if rich people would ask\ntheir friends sometimes to public amusements\u2014order a play for them, for\ninstance\u2014or at any rate, provide some manifest amusement?  They might,\noccasionally with great advantage, abridge the expense of their dinners;\nand throw it into other channels of hospitality.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Ah, if they would have good acting at their houses, that\nwould be very delightful; but I cannot say that the being taken to any\nplace of public amusement would much delight me.  By the way, Milverton,\nwhat do you say of theatres in the way of recreation?  This decline of\nthe drama, too, is a thing you must have thought about: let us hear your\nnotions.\n\n_Milverton_.  I think one of the causes sometimes assigned, that reading\nis more spread, is a true and an important one; but, otherwise, I fancy\nthat the present decline of the drama depends upon very small things\nwhich might be remedied.  As to a love of the drama going out of the\nhuman heart, that is all nonsense.  Put it at the lowest, what a great\npleasure it is to hear a good play read.  And again, as to serious\npursuits unfitting men for dramatic entertainments, it is quite the\ncontrary.  A man, wearied with care and business, would find more change\nof ideas with less fatigue, in seeing a good play, than in almost any\nother way of amusing himself.\n\n_Dunsford_.  What are the causes then of the decline of the drama?\n\n_Milverton_.  In England, or rather in London,\u2014for London is England for\ndramatic purposes; in London, then, theatrical arrangements seem to be\nframed to drive away people of sense.  The noisome atmosphere, the\ndifficult approach, the over-size of the great theatres, the intolerable\nlength of performances.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Hear! hear!\n\n_Milverton_.  The crowding together of theatres in one part of the town,\nthe lateness of the hours\u2014\n\n_Ellesmere_.  The folly of the audience, who always applaud in the wrong\nplace\u2014\n\n_Dunsford_.  There is no occasion to say any more; I am quite convinced.\n\n_Milverton_.  But these annoyances need not be.  Build a theatre of\nmoderate dimensions; give it great facility of approach; take care that\nthe performances never exceed three hours; let lions and dwarfs pass by\nwithout any endeavour to get them within the walls; lay aside all\nambition of making stage waves which may almost equal real Ramsgate waves\nto our cockney apprehensions.  Of course there must be good players and\ngood plays.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Now we come to the part of Hamlet.\n\n_Milverton_.  Good players and good plays are both to be had if there\nwere good demand for them.  But, I was going to say, let there be all\nthese things, especially let there be complete ventilation, and the\ntheatre will have the most abundant success.  Why, that one thing alone,\nthe villainous atmosphere at most public places, is enough to daunt any\nsensible man from going to them.\n\n_Dunsford_.  There should be such a choice of plays\u2014not merely\nChamberlain-clipt\u2014as any man or woman could go to.\n\n_Milverton_.  There should be certainly, but how is such a choice to be\nmade, if the people who could regulate it, for the most part, stay away?\nIt is a dangerous thing, the better classes leaving any great source of\namusement and instruction wholly, or greatly, to the less refined\nclasses.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Yes, I must confess it is.\n\nGreat part of your arguments apply to musical as well as to theatrical\nentertainments.  Do you find similar results with respect to them?\n\n_Milverton_.  Why, they are not attended by any means as they would be,\nor made what they might be, if the objections I mentioned were removed.\n\n_Dunsford_.  What do you say to the out-of-door entertainments for a town\npopulation?\n\n_Milverton_.  As I said before, my dear Dunsford, I cannot give you a\nchapter of a \u201cBook of Sports.\u201d  There ought, of course, to be parks for\nall quarters of the town: and I confess it would please me better to see,\nin holiday times and hours of leisure, hearty games going on in these\nparks, than a number of people sauntering about in uncomfortably new and\nunaccustomed clothes.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Do you not see, Dunsford, that, like a cautious official\nman, he does not want to enter into small details, which have always an\nair of ridicule?  He is not prepared to pledge himself to cricket, golf,\nfootball, or prisoner\u2019s bars; but in his heart he is manifestly a Young\nEnglander\u2014without the white waistcoat.  Nothing would please him better\nthan to see in large letters, on one of those advertising vans, \u201cGreat\nmatch!  Victoria Park!!  Eleven of Fleet Street against the Eleven of\nSaffron Hill!!!\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, there is a great deal in the spirit of Young England\nthat I like very much, indeed that I respect.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I should like the Young England party better myself if I\nwere quite sure there was no connection between them and a clan of sour,\npity-mongering people, who wash one away with eternal talk about the\ncontrast between riches and poverty; with whom a poor man is always\nvirtuous; and who would, if they could, make him as envious and as\ndiscontented as possible.\n\n_Milverton_.  Nothing can be more strikingly in contrast with such\nthinkers than Young England.  Young Englanders, according to the best of\ntheir theories, ought to be men of warm sympathy with all classes.  There\nis no doubt of this, that very seldom does any good thing arise, but\nthere comes an ugly phantom of a caricature of it, which sidles up\nagainst the reality, mouths its favourite words as a third-rate actor\ndoes a great part, under-mimics its wisdom, over-acts its folly, is by\nhalf the world taken for it, goes some way to suppress it in its own\ntime, and, perhaps, lives for it in history.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well brought out, that metaphor, but I don\u2019t know that it\nmeans more than that the followers of a system do in general a good deal\nto corrupt it, or that when a great principle is worked into human\naffairs, a considerable accretion of human folly and falseness mostly\ngrows round it: which things some of us had a suspicion of before.\n\n_Dunsford_.  To go back to the subject.  What would you do for country\namusements, Milverton?  That is what concerns me, you know.\n\n_Milverton_.  Athletic amusements go on naturally here: do not require so\nmuch fostering as in towns.  The commons must be carefully kept: I have\nquite a Cobbettian fear of their being taken away from us under some\nplausible pretext or other.  Well, then, it strikes me that a great deal\nmight be done to promote the more refined pleasures of life among our\nrural population.  I hope we shall live to see many of Hullah\u2019s pupils\nplaying an important part in this way.  Of course, the foundation for\nthese things may best be laid at schools; and is being laid in some\nplaces, I am happy to say.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Humph, music, sing-song!\n\n_Milverton_.  Don\u2019t you observe, Dunsford, that when Ellesmere wants to\nattack us, and does not exactly see how, he mutters to himself\nsarcastically, sneering himself up, as it were, to the attack.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You and Dunsford are both wild for music, from\nbarrel-organs upwards.\n\n_Milverton_.  I confess to liking the humblest attempts at melody.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I feel as Sir Thomas Browne tells us he felt, that \u201ceven\nthat vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad,\nstrikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound contemplation of the\nfirst composer.  There is something in it of divinity more than the ear\ndiscovers; it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world\nand creatures of God: such a melody to the ear as the whole world well\nunderstood, would afford the understanding.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  Apropos of music in country places, when I was going about\nlast year in the neighbouring county, I saw such a pretty scene at one of\nthe towns.  They had got up a band, which played once a week in the\nevening.  It was a beautiful summer evening, and the window of my room at\nthe end overlooked the open space they had chosen for their performances.\nThere was the great man of the neighbourhood in his carriage looking as\nif he came partly on duty, as well as for pleasure.  Then there were\nburly tradesmen, with an air of quiet satisfaction, sauntering about, or\nleaning against railings.  Some were no doubt critical\u2014thought that Will\nMiller did not play as well as usual this evening.  Will\u2019s young wife,\nwho had come out to look again at him in his band dress (for the band had\na uniform), thought differently.  Little boys broke out into imaginary\npolkas, having some distant reference to the music: not without grace\nthough.  The sweep was pre-eminent: as if he would say, \u201cDirty and sooty\nas I am I have a great deal of fun in me.  Indeed, what would May-day be\nbut for me?\u201d  Studious little boys of the free-school, all green\ngrasshopper-looking, walked about as boys knowing something of Latin.\nHere and there went a couple of them in childish loving way, with their\narms about each other\u2019s necks.  Matrons and shy young maidens sat upon\nthe door-steps near.  Many a merry laugh filled up the interludes of\nmusic.  And when evening came softly down upon us, the band finished with\n\u201cGod save the Queen,\u201d the little circle of those who would hear the last\nnote moved off, there was a clattering of shutters, a shining of lights\nthrough casement-windows, and soon the only sound to be heard was the\nrough voice of some villager, who would have been too timid to adventure\nanything by daylight, but now sang boldly out as he went homewards.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Very pretty, but it sounds to me somewhat fabulous.\n\n_Milverton_.  I assure you\u2014\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes, you were tired, had a good dinner, read a speech for\nor against the corn-laws, fell asleep of course, and had this ingenious\ndream, which, to this day, you believe to have been a reality.  I\nunderstand it all.\n\n_Milverton_.  I wish I could have many more such dreams.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\n\nOUR last conversation broke off abruptly on the entrance of a visitor: we\nforgot to name a time for our next meeting; and when I came again, I\nfound Milverton alone in his study.  He was reading Count Rumford\u2019s\nessays.\n\n_Dunsford_.  So you are reading Count Rumford.  What is it that interests\nyou there?\n\n_Milverton_.  Everything he writes about.  He is to me a delightful\nwriter.  He throws so much life into all his writings.  Whether they are\nabout making the most of food or fuel, or propounding the benefits of\nbathing, or inveighing against smoke, it is that he went and saw and did\nand experimented himself upon himself.  His proceedings at Munich to feed\nthe poor are more interesting than many a novel.  It is surprising, too,\nhow far he was before the world in all the things he gave his mind to.\n\nHere Ellesmere entered.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I heard you were come, Dunsford: I hope we shall have an\nessay to-day.  My critical faculties have been dormant for some days, and\nwant to be roused a little.  Milverton was talking to you about Count\nRumford when I came in, was he not?  Ah, the Count is a great favourite\nwith Milverton when he is down here; but there is a book upstairs which\nis Milverton\u2019s real favourite just now, a portentous-looking book; some\nrelation to a blue-book, something about sewerage, or health of towns, or\npublic improvements, over which said book our friend here goes into\nenthusiasms.  I am sure if it could be reduced to the size of that\ntatterdemalion Horace that he carries about, the poor little Horace would\nbe quite supplanted.\n\n_Milverton_.  Now, I must tell you, Dunsford, that Ellesmere himself took\nup this book he talks about, and it was a long time before he put it\ndown.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes, there is something in real life, even though it is in\nthe unheroic part of it, that interests one.  I mean to get through the\nbook.\n\n_Dunsford_.  What are we to have to-day for our essay?\n\nMilverton.  Let us adjourn to the garden, and I will read you an essay on\nGreatness, if I can find it.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nWe went to our favourite place, and Milverton read us the following\nessay.\n\n\n\nGREATNESS.\n\n\nYou cannot substitute any epithet for great, when you are talking of\ngreat men.  Greatness is not general dexterity carried to any extent; nor\nproficiency in any one subject of human endeavour.  There are great\nastronomers, great scholars, great painters, even great poets who are\nvery far from great men.  Greatness can do without success and with it.\nWilliam is greater in his retreats than Marlborough in his victories.  On\nthe other hand, the uniformity of C\u00e6sar\u2019s success does not dull his\ngreatness.  Greatness is not in the circumstances, but in the man.\n\nWhat does this greatness then consist in?  Not in a nice balance of\nqualities, purposes, and powers.  That will make a man happy, a\nsuccessful man, a man always in his right depth.  Nor does it consist in\nabsence of errors.  We need only glance back at any list that can be made\nof great men, to be convinced of that.  Neither does greatness consist in\nenergy, though often accompanied by it.  Indeed, it is rather the breadth\nof the waters than the force of the current that we look to, to fulfil\nour idea of greatness.  There is no doubt that energy acting upon a\nnature endowed with the qualities that we sum up in the word cleverness,\nand directed to a few clear purposes, produces a great effect, and may\nsometimes be mistaken for greatness.  If a man is mainly bent upon his\nown advancement, it cuts many a difficult knot of policy for him, and\ngives a force and distinctness to his mode of going on which looks grand.\nThe same happens if he has one pre-eminent idea of any kind, even though\nit should be a narrow one.  Indeed, success in life is mostly gained by\nunity of purpose; whereas greatness often fails by reason of its having\nmanifold purposes, but it does not cease to be greatness on that account.\n\nIf greatness can be shut up in qualities, it will be found to consist in\ncourage and in openness of mind and soul.  These qualities may not seem\nat first to be so potent.  But see what growth there is in them.  The\neducation of a man of open mind is never ended.  Then, with openness of\nsoul, a man sees some way into all other souls that come near him, feels\nwith them, has their experience, is in himself a people.  Sympathy is the\nuniversal solvent.  Nothing is understood without it.  The capacity of a\nman, at least for understanding, may almost be said to vary according to\nhis powers of sympathy.  Again, what is there that can counteract\nselfishness like sympathy?  Selfishness may be hedged in by minute\nwatchfulness and self-denial, but it is counteracted by the nature being\nencouraged to grow out and fix its tendrils upon foreign objects.\n\nThe immense defect that want of sympathy is, may be strikingly seen in\nthe failure of the many attempts that have been made in all ages to\nconstruct the Christian character, omitting sympathy.  It has produced\nnumbers of people walking up and down one narrow plank of self-restraint,\npondering over their own merits and demerits, keeping out, not the world\nexactly, but their fellow-creatures from their hearts, and caring only to\ndrive their neighbours before them on this plank of theirs, or to push\nthem headlong.  Thus, with many virtues, and much hard work at the\nformation of character, we have had splendid bigots or censorious small\npeople.\n\nBut sympathy is warmth and light too.  It is, as it were, the moral\natmosphere connecting all animated natures.  Putting aside, for a moment,\nthe large differences that opinions, language, and education make between\nmen, look at the innate diversity of character.  Natural philosophers\nwere amazed when they thought they had found a new-created species.  But\nwhat is each man but a creature such as the world has not before seen?\nThen think how they pour forth in multitudinous masses, from princes\ndelicately nurtured to little boys on scrubby commons, or in dark\ncellars.  How are these people to be understood, to be taught to\nunderstand each other, but by those who have the deepest sympathies with\nall?  There cannot be a great man without large sympathy.  There may be\nmen who play loud-sounding parts in life without it, as on the stage,\nwhere kings and great people sometimes enter who are only characters of\nsecondary import\u2014deputy great men.  But the interest and the instruction\nlie with those who have to feel and suffer most.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nAdd courage to this openness we have been considering, and you have a man\nwho can own himself in the wrong, can forgive, can trust, can adventure,\ncan, in short, use all the means that insight and sympathy endow him\nwith.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nI see no other essential characteristics in the greatness of nations than\nthere are in the greatness of individuals.  Extraneous circumstances\nlargely influence nations as individuals; and make a larger part of the\nshow of the former than of the latter; as we are wont to consider no\nnation great that is not great in extent or resources, as well as in\ncharacter.  But of two nations, equal in other respects, the superiority\nmust belong to the one which excels in courage and openness of mind and\nsoul.\n\nAgain, in estimating the relative merits of different periods of the\nworld, we must employ the same tests of greatness that we use to\nindividuals.  To compare, for instance, the present and the past.  What\nastounds us most in the past is the wonderful intolerance and cruelty: a\ncruelty constantly turning upon the inventors: an intolerance provoking\nruin to the thing it would foster.  The most admirable precepts are\nthrown from time to time upon this cauldron of human affairs, and\noftentimes they only seem to make it blaze the higher.  We find men\ndevoting the best part of their intellects to the invariable annoyance\nand persecution of their fellows.  You might think that the earth brought\nforth with more abundant fruitfulness in the past than now, seeing that\nmen found so much time for cruelty, but that you read of famines and\nprivations which these latter days cannot equal.  The recorded violent\ndeaths amount to millions.  And this is but a small part of the matter.\nConsider the modes of justice; the use of torture, for instance.  What\nmust have been the blinded state of the wise persons (wise for their day)\nwho used torture?  Did they ever think themselves, \u201cWhat should we not\nsay if we were subjected to this?\u201d  Many times they must really have\ndesired to get at the truth; and such was their mode of doing it.  Now,\nat the risk of being thought \u201ca laudator\u201d of time present, I would say,\nhere is the element of greatness we have made progress in.  We are more\nopen in mind and soul.  We have arrived (some of us at least) at the\nconclusion that men may honestly differ without offence.  We have learned\nto pity each other more.  There is a greatness in modern toleration which\nour ancestors knew not.\n\nThen comes the other element of greatness, courage.  Have we made\nprogress in that?  This is a much more dubious question.  The subjects of\nterror vary so much in different times that it is difficult to estimate\nthe different degrees of courage shown in resisting them.  Men fear\npublic opinion now as they did in former times the Star Chamber; and\nthose awful goddesses, Appearances, are to us what the Fates were to the\nGreeks.  It is hardly possible to measure the courage of a modern against\nthat of an ancient; but I am unwilling to believe but that enlightenment\nmust strengthen courage.\n\nThe application of the tests of greatness, as in the above instance, is a\nmatter of detail and of nice appreciation, as to the results of which men\nmust be expected to differ largely: the tests themselves remain\ninvariable\u2014openness of nature to admit the light of love and reason, and\ncourage to pursue it.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I agree to your theory, as far as openness of nature is\nconcerned; but I do not much like to put that half-brute thing, courage,\nso high.\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, you cannot have greatness without it: you may have\nwell-intentioned people and far-seeing people; but if they have no\nstoutness of heart, they will only be shifty or remonstrant, nothing like\ngreat.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You mean will, not courage.  Without will, your\nopen-minded, open-hearted man may be like a great, rudderless vessel\ndriven about by all winds: not a small craft, but a most uncertain one.\n\n_Milverton_.  No, I mean both: both will and courage.  Courage is the\nbody to will.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I believe you are right in that; but do not omit will.  It\namused me to see how you brought in one of your old notions\u2014that this age\nis not contemptible.  You scribbling people are generally on the other\nside.\n\n_Milverton_.  You malign us.  If I must give any account for my personal\npredilection for modern times, it consists perhaps in this, that we may\nnow speak our mind.  What Tennyson says of his own land,\n\n    \u201cThe land where, girt with friend or foe,\n    A man may say the thing he will,\u201d\u2014\n\nmay be said, in some measure, of the age in which we live.  This is an\ninexpressible comfort.  This doubles life.  These things surely may be\nsaid in favour of the present age, not with a view to puff it up, but so\nfar to encourage ourselves, as we may by seeing that the world does not\ngo on for nothing, that all the misery, blood, and toil that have been\nspent, were not poured out in vain.  Could we have our ancestors again\nbefore us, would they not rejoice at seeing what they had purchased for\nus: would they think it any compliment to them to extol their times at\nthe expense of the present, and so to intimate that their efforts had led\nto nothing?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  \u201cI doubt,\u201d as Lord Eldon would have said; no, upon second\nthoughts, I do not doubt.  I feel assured that a good many of these said\nancestors you are calling up would be much discomforted at finding that\nall their suffering had led to no sure basis of persecution of the other\nside.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I wonder, Ellesmere, what you would have done in persecuting\ntimes.  What escape would your sarcasm have found for itself?\n\n_Milverton_.  Some orthodox way, I daresay.  I do not think he would have\nbeen particularly fond of martyrdom.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  No.  I have no taste for making torches for truth, or being\none: I prefer humane darkness to such illumination.  At the same time one\ncannot tell lies; and if one had been questioned about the\nincomprehensibilities which men in former days were so fierce upon, one\nmust have shown that one disagreed with all parties.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Do not say \u201cone:\u201d  _I_ should not have disagreed with the\ngreat Protestant leaders in the Reformation, for instance.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Humph.\n\n_Milverton_.  If we get aground upon the Reformation, we shall never push\noff again\u2014else would I say something far from complimentary to those\nProtestant proceedings which we may rather hope were Tudoresque than\nProtestant.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  No, that is not fair.  The Tudors were a coarse, fierce\nrace; but it will not do to lay the faults of their times upon them only.\nLook at Elizabeth\u2019s ministers.  They had about as much notion of\nreligious tolerance as they had of Professor Wheatstone\u2019s telegraph.  It\nwas not a growth of that age.\n\n_Milverton_.  I do not know.  You have Cardinal Pole and the Earl of\nEssex, both tolerant men in the midst of bigots.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, as you said, Milverton, we shall never push off, if\nwe once get aground on this subject.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I am in fault: so I will take upon myself to bring you quite\naway from the Reformation.  I have been thinking of that comparison in\nthe essay of the present with the past.  Such comparisons seem to me very\nuseful, as they best enable us to understand our own times.  And, then,\nwhen we have ascertained the state and tendency of our own age, we ought\nto strive to enrich it with those qualities which are complementary to\nits own.  Now with all this toleration, which delights you so much, dear\nMilverton, is it not an age rather deficient in caring about great\nmatters?\n\n_Milverton_.  If you mean great speculative matters, I might agree with\nyou; but if you mean what I should call the greatest matters, such as\ncharity, humanity, and the like, I should venture to differ with you,\nDunsford.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I do not like to see the world indifferent to great\nspeculative matters.  I then fear shallowness and earthiness.\n\n_Milverton_.  It is very difficult to say what the world is thinking of\nnow.  It is certainly wrong to suppose that this is a shallow age because\nit is not driven by one impulse.  As civilisation advances, it becomes\nmore difficult to estimate what is going on, and we set it all down as\nconfusion.  Now there is not one \u201cgreat antique heart,\u201d whose beatings we\ncan count, but many impulses, many circles of thought in which men are\nmoving many objects.  Men are not all in the same state of progress, so\ncannot be moved in masses as of old.  At one time chivalry urged all men,\nthen the Church, and the phenomena were few, simple, and broad, or at\nleast they seem so in history.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Very true; still I agree somewhat with Dunsford, that men\nare not agitated as they used to be by the great speculative questions.\nI account for it in this way, that the material world has opened out\nbefore us, and we cannot but look at that, and must play with it and work\nat it.  I would say, too, that philosophy had been found out, and there\nis something in that.  Still, I think if it were not for the interest now\nattaching to material things, great intellectual questions, not exactly\nof the old kind, would arise and agitate the world.\n\n_Milverton_.  There is one thing in my mind that may confirm your view.\nI cannot but think that the enlarged view we have of the universe must in\nsome measure damp personal ambition.  What is it to be a King, Sheik,\nTetrarch, or Emperor, over a bit of a little bit?  Macbeth\u2019s speech,\n\u201cwe\u2019d jump the life to come,\u201d is a thing a man with modern lights,\nhowever madly ambitious, would hardly utter.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Religious lights, Milverton.\n\n_Milverton_.  Of course not, if he had them; but I meant scientific\nlights.  Sway over our fellow-creatures, at any rate anything but mental\nsway, has shrunk into less proportions.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I have been looking over the essay.  I think you may put in\nsomewhere\u2014that that age would probably be the greatest in which there was\nthe least difference between great men and the people in general\u2014when the\nformer were only neglected, not hunted down.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You are rather lengthy here about the cruelties to be found\nin history; but we are apt to forget these matters.\n\n_Milverton_.  They always press upon my mind.\n\n_Dunsford_.  And on mine.  I do not like to read much of history for that\nvery reason.  I get so sick at heart about it all.\n\n_Milverton_.  Ah, yes, history is a stupendous thing.  To read it is like\nlooking at the stars; we turn away in awe and perplexity.  Yet there is\nsome method running through the little affairs of man as through the\nmultitude of suns, seemingly to us as confused as routed armies in full\nflight.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Some law of love.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I am afraid it is not in the past alone that we should be\nawestruck with horrors: we, who have a slave-trade still on earth.  But,\nto go back to the essay, I like what you say about the theory of\nconstructing the Christian character without geniality; only you do not\ngo far enough.  You are afraid.  People are for ever talking, especially\nyou philanthropical people, about making others happy.  I do not know any\nway so sure of making others happy as of being so oneself, to begin with.\nI do not mean that people are to be self-absorbed; but they are to drink\nin nature and life a little.  From a genial, wisely-developed man good\nthings radiate; whereas you must allow, Milverton, that benevolent people\nare very apt to be one-sided and fussy, and not of the sweetest temper if\nothers will not be good and happy in their way.\n\n_Milverton_.  That is really not fair.  Of course, acid, small-minded\npeople carry their narrow notions and their acidity into their\nbenevolence.  Benevolence is no abstract perfection.  Men will express\ntheir benevolence according to their other gifts or want of gifts.  If it\nis strong, it overcomes other things in the character which would be\nhindrances to it; but it must speak in the language of the soul it is in.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Come, let us go and see the pigs.  I hear them grunting\nover their dinners in the farmyard.  I like to see creatures who can be\nhappy without a theory.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\n\nTHE next time that I came over to Worth-Ashton it was raining, and I\nfound my friends in the study.\n\n\u201cWell, Dunsford,\u201d said Ellesmere, \u201cis it not comfortable to have our\nsessions here for once, and to be looking out on a good solid English wet\nday?\u201d\n\n_Dunsford_.  Rather a fluid than a solid.  But I agree with you in\nthinking it is very comfortable here.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I like to look upon the backs of books.  First I think how\nmuch of the owner\u2019s inner life and character is shown in his books; then\nperhaps I wonder how he got such a book which seems so remote from all\nthat I know of him\u2014\n\n_Milverton_.  I shall turn my books the wrong side upwards when you come\ninto the study.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  But what amuses me most is to see the odd way in which\nbooks get together, especially in the library of a man who reads his\nbooks and puts them up again wherever there is room.  Now here is a\ncharming party: \u201cA Treatise on the Steam-Engine\u201d between \u201cLocke on\nChristianity\u201d and Madame de Stael\u2019s \u201cCorinne.\u201d  I wonder what they talk\nabout at night when we are all asleep.  Here is another happy\njuxtaposition: old Clarendon next to a modern metaphysician whom he would\npositively loathe.  Here is Sadler next to Malthus, and Horsley next to\nPriestley; but this sort of thing happens most in the best regulated\nlibraries.  It is a charming reflection for controversial writers, that\ntheir works will be put together on the same shelves, often between the\nsame covers; and that, in the minds of educated men, the name of one\nwriter will be sure to recall the name of the other.  So they go down to\nposterity as a brotherhood.\n\n_Milverton_.  To complete Ellesmere\u2019s theory, we may say that all those\ninjuries to books which we choose to throw upon some wretched worm, are\nbut the wounds from rival books.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Certainly.  But now let us proceed to polish up the weapons\nof another of these spiteful creatures.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Yes.  What is to be our essay to-day, Milverton?\n\n_Milverton_.  Fiction.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Now, that is really unfortunate.  Fiction is just the\nsubject to be discussed\u2014no, not discussed, talked over\u2014out of doors on a\nhot day, all of us lying about in easy attitudes on the grass, Dunsford\nwith his gaiters forming a most picturesque and prominent figure.  But\nthere is nothing complete in this life.  \u201cSurgit amari aliquid:\u201d and so\nwe must listen to Fiction in arm-chairs.\n\n\n\nFICTION.\n\n\nThe influence of works of fiction is unbounded.  Even the minds of\nwell-informed people are often more stored with characters from\nacknowledged fiction than from history or biography, or the real life\naround them.  We dispute about these characters as if they were\nrealities.  Their experience is our experience; we adopt their feelings,\nand imitate their acts.  And so there comes to be something traditional\neven in the management of the passions.  Shakespeare\u2019s historical plays\nwere the only history to the Duke of Marlborough.  Thousands of Greeks\nacted under the influence of what Achilles or Ulysses did, in Homer.  The\npoet sings of the deeds that shall be.  He imagines the past; he forms\nthe future.\n\nYet how surpassingly interesting is real life when we get an insight into\nit.  Occasionally a great genius lifts up the veil of history, and we see\nmen who once really were alive, who did not always live only in history;\nor, amidst the dreary page of battles, levies, sieges, and the\nsleep-inducing weavings and unweavings of political combination, we come,\nourselves, across some spoken or written words of the great actors of the\ntime, and are then fascinated by the life and reality of these things.\nCould you have the life of any man really portrayed to you, sun-drawn as\nit were, its hopes, its fears, its revolutions of opinion in each day,\nits most anxious wishes attained, and then, perhaps, crystallising into\nits blackest regrets\u2014such a work would go far to contain all histories,\nand be the greatest lesson of love, humility, and tolerance, that men had\never read.\n\nNow fiction does attempt something like the above.  In history we are\ncramped by impertinent facts that must, however, be set down; by theories\nthat must be answered; evidence that must be weighed; views that must be\ntaken.  Our facts constantly break off just where we should wish to\nexamine them most closely.  The writer of fiction follows his characters\ninto the recesses of their hearts.  There are no closed doors for him.\nHis puppets have no secrets from their master.  He plagues you with no\ndoubts, no half-views, no criticism.  Thus they thought, he tells you;\nthus they looked, thus they acted.  Then, with every opportunity for\nscenic arrangement (for though his characters are confidential with him,\nhe is only as confidential with his reader as the interest of the story\nwill allow), it is not to be wondered at that the majority of readers\nshould look upon history as a task, but tales of fiction as a delight.\n\nThe greatest merit of fiction is the one so ably put forward by Sir James\nMackintosh, namely, that it creates and nourishes sympathy.  It extends\nthis sympathy, too, in directions where, otherwise, we hardly see when it\nwould have come.  But it may be objected that this sympathy is\nindiscriminate, and that we are in danger of mixing up virtue and vice,\nand blurring both, if we are led to sympathise with all manner of\nwrong-doers.  But, in the first place, virtue and vice are so mixed in\nreal life, that it is well to be somewhat prepared for that fact; and,\nmoreover, the sympathy is not wrongly directed.  Who has not felt intense\nsympathy for Macbeth?  Yet could he be alive again, with evil thoughts\nagainst \u201cthe gracious Duncan,\u201d and could he see into all that has been\nfelt for him, would that be an encouragement to murder?  The intense pity\nof wise people for the crimes of others, when rightly represented, is one\nof the strongest antidotes against crime.  We have taken the extreme case\nof sympathy being directed towards bad men.  How often has fiction made\nus sympathise with obscure suffering and retiring greatness, with the\nworld-despised, and especially with those mixed characters in whom we\nmight otherwise see but one colour\u2014with Shylock and with Hamlet, with\nJeanie Deans and with Claverhouse, with Sancho Panza as well as with Don\nQuixote.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nOn the other hand, there is a danger of too much converse with fiction\nleading us into dream-land, or rather into lubber-land.  Of course this\n\u201ctoo much converse\u201d implies large converse with inferior writers.  Such\nwriters are too apt to make life as they would have it for themselves.\nSometimes, also, they must make it to suit booksellers\u2019 rules.  Having\nsuch power over their puppets they abuse it.  They can kill these\npuppets, change their natures suddenly, reward or punish them so easily,\nthat it is no wonder they are led to play fantastic tricks with them.\nNow, if a sedulous reader of the works of such writers should form his\nnotions of real life from them, he would occasionally meet with rude\nshocks when he encountered the realities of that life.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nFor my own part, notwithstanding all the charms of life in\nswiftly-written novels, I prefer real life.  It is true that, in the\nformer, everything breaks off round, every little event tends to some\ngreat thing, everybody one meets is to exercise some great influence for\ngood or ill upon one\u2019s fate.  I take it for granted one fancies oneself\nthe hero.  Then all one\u2019s fancy is paid in ready money, or at least one\ncan draw upon it at the end of the third volume.  One leaps to remote\nwealth and honour by hairbreadth chances; and one\u2019s uncle in India always\ndies opportunely.  To be sure the thought occurs, that if this novel life\ncould be turned into real life, one might be the uncle in India and not\nthe hero of the tale.  But that is a trifling matter, for at any rate one\nshould carry on with spirit somebody else\u2019s story.  On the whole,\nhowever, as I said before, I prefer real life, where nothing is tied up\nneatly, but all in odds and ends; where the doctrine of compensation\nenters largely, where we are often most blamed when we least deserve it,\nwhere there is no third volume to make things straight, and where many an\nAugustus marries many a Belinda, and, instead of being happy ever\nafterwards, finds that there is a growth of trials and troubles for each\nsuccessive period of man\u2019s life.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nIn considering the subject of fiction, the responsibility of the writers\nthereof is a matter worth pointing out.  We see clearly enough that\nhistorians are to be limited by facts and probabilities; but we are apt\nto make a large allowance for the fancies of writers of fiction.  We must\nremember, however, that fiction is not falsehood.  If a writer puts\nabstract virtues into book-clothing, and sends them upon stilts into the\nworld, he is a bad writer: if he classifies men, and attributes all\nvirtue to one class and all vice to another, he is a false writer.  Then,\nagain, if his ideal is so poor, that he fancies man\u2019s welfare to consist\nin immediate happiness; if he means to paint a great man and paints only\na greedy one, he is a mischievous writer and not the less so, although by\nlamplight and amongst a juvenile audience, his coarse scene-painting\nshould be thought very grand.  He may be true to his own fancy, but he is\nfalse to Nature.  A writer, of course, cannot get beyond his own ideal:\nbut at least he should see that he works up to it: and if it is a poor\none, he had better write histories of the utmost concentration of\ndulness, than amuse us with unjust and untrue imaginings.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I am glad you have kept to the obvious things about\nfiction.  It would have been a great nuisance to have had to follow you\nthrough intricate theories about what fiction consists in, and what are\nits limits, and so on.  Then we should have got into questions touching\nthe laws of representation generally, and then into art, of which,\nbetween ourselves, you know very little.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Talking of representation, what do you two, who have now\nseen something of the world, think about representative government?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Dunsford plumps down upon us sometimes with awful\nquestions: what do you think of all philosophy? or what is your opinion\nof life in general?  Could not you throw in a few small questions of that\nkind, together with your representative one, and we might try to answer\nthem all at once.  Dunsford is only laughing at us, Milverton.\n\n_Milverton_.  No, I know what was in Dunsford\u2019s mind when he asked that\nquestion.  He has had his doubts and misgivings, when he has been reading\na six nights\u2019 debate (for the people in the country I daresay do read\nthose things), whether representative government is the most complete\ndevice the human mind could suggest for getting at wise rulers.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  It is a doubt which has crossed my mind.\n\n_Milverton_.  And mine; but the doubt, if it has ever been more than mere\npetulance, has not had much practical weight with me.  Look how the\nbusiness of the world is managed.  There are a few people who think out\nthings, and a few who execute.  The former are not to be secured by any\ndevice.  They are gifts.  The latter may be well chosen, have often been\nwell chosen, under other forms of government than the representative one.\nI believe that the favourites of kings have been a superior race of men.\nEven a fool does not choose a fool for a favourite.  He knows better than\nthat: he must have something to lean against.  But between the thinkers\nand the doers (if, indeed, we ought to make such a distinction), _what a\nnumber of useful links there are in a representative government_ on\naccount of the much larger number of people admitted into some share of\ngovernment.  What general cultivation must come from that, and what\nsecurity!  Of course, everything has its wrong side; and from this number\nof people let in there comes declamation and claptrap and mob-service,\nwhich is much the same thing as courtiership was in other times.  But\nthen, to make the comparison a fair one, you must take the wrong side of\nany other form of government that has been devised.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, but so much power centring in the lower house of\nParliament, and the getting into Parliament being a thing which is not\nvery inviting to the kind of people one would most like to see there, do\nyou not think that the ablest men are kept away?\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes; but if you make your governing body a unit or a ten,\nor any small number, how is this power, unless it is Argus-eyed, and\nmyriad-minded, and right-minded too, to choose the right men any better\nthan they are found now?  The great danger, as it appears to me, of\nrepresentative government is lest it should slide down from\nrepresentative government to delegate government.  In my opinion, the\nwelfare of England, in great measure, depends upon what takes place at\nthe hustings.  If, in the majority of instances, there were abject\nconduct there, electors and elected would be alike debased; upright\npublic men could not be expected to arise from such beginnings; and\nthoughtful persons would begin to consider whether some other form of\ngovernment could not forthwith be made out.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I have a supreme disgust for the man who at the hustings\nhas no opinion beyond or above the clamour round him.  How such a fellow\nwould have kissed the ground before a Pompadour, or waited for hours in a\nBuckingham\u2019s antechamber, only to catch the faintest beam of reflected\nlight from royalty.\n\nBut I declare we have been just like schoolboys talking about forms of\ngovernment and so on.\n\n    \u201cFor forms of government let fools contest,\n    That which is _worst_ administered is best,\u201d\u2014\n\nthat is, representative government.\n\n_Milverton_.  I should not like either of you to fancy, from what I have\nbeen saying about representative government, that I do not see the\ndangers and the evils of it.  In fact, it is a frequent thought with me\nof what importance the House of Lords is at present, and of how much\ngreater importance it might be made.  If there were Peers for life, and\nofficial members of the House of Commons, it would, I think, meet most of\nyour objections, Dunsford.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I suppose I am becoming a little rusty and disposed to\ngrumble, as I grow old; but there is a good deal in modern government\nwhich seems to me very rude and absurd.  There comes a clamour, partly\nreasonable; power is deaf to it, overlooks it, says there is no such\nthing; then great clamour; after a time, power welcomes that, takes it to\nits arms, says that now it is loud it is very wise, wishes it had always\nbeen clamour itself.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  How many acres do you farm, Dunsford?  How spiteful you\nare!\n\n_Dunsford_.  I am not thinking of Corn Laws alone, as you fancy, Master\nEllesmere.  But to go to other things.  I quite agree, Milverton, with\nwhat you were saying just now about the business of the world being\ncarried on by few, and the thinking few being in the nature of gifts to\nthe world, not elicited by King or Kaiser.\n\n_Milverton_.  The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise\nin solitary places.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Not a bad metaphor, but untrue.  Aristotle, Bacon\u2014\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, I believe it would be much wiser to say, that we\ncannot lay down rules about the highest work; either when it is done,\nwhere it will be done, or how it can be made to be done.  It is too\nimmaterial for our measurement; for the highest part even of the mere\nbusiness of the world is in dealing with ideas.  It is very amusing to\nobserve the misconceptions of men on these points.  They call for what is\noutward\u2014can understand that, can praise it.  Fussiness and the forms of\nactivity in all ages get great praise.  Imagine an active, bustling\nlittle pr\u00e6tor under Augustus, how he probably pointed out Horace to his\nsons as a moony kind of man, whose ways were much to be avoided, and told\nthem it was a weakness in Augustus to like such idle men about him\ninstead of men of business.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Or fancy a bustling Glasgow merchant of Adam Smith\u2019s day\nwatching him.  How little would the merchant have dreamt what a number of\nvessels were to be floated away by the ink in the Professor\u2019s inkstand;\nand what crashing of axes, and clearing of forests in distant lands, the\nnoise of his pen upon the paper portended.\n\n_Milverton_.  It is not only the effect of the still-working man that the\nbusy man cannot anticipate, but neither can he comprehend the present\nlabour.  If Horace had told my pr\u00e6tor that\n\n    \u201cAbstinuit Venere et vino, sudavit et alsit,\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, to write a few lines!\u201d would his pr\u00e6torship have cried out.  \u201cWhy,\nI can live well and enjoy life; and I flatter myself no one in Rome does\nmore business.\u201d\n\n_Dunsford_.  All of it only goes to show how little we know of each\nother, and how tolerant we ought to be of others\u2019 efforts.\n\n_Milverton_.  The trials that there must be every day without any\nincident that even the most minute household chronicler could set down:\nthe labours without show or noise!\n\n_Ellesmere_.  The deep things that there are which, with unthinking\npeople, pass for shallow things, merely because they are clear as well as\ndeep.  My fable of the other day, for instance\u2014which instead of producing\nany moral effect upon you two, only seemed to make you both inclined to\ngiggle.\n\n_Milverton_.  I am so glad you reminded me of that.  I, too, fired with a\nnoble emulation, have invented a fable since we last met which I want you\nto hear.  I assure you I did not mean to laugh at yours: it was only that\nit came rather unexpectedly upon me.  You are not exactly the person from\nwhom one should expect fables.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Now for the fable.\n\n_Milverton_.  There was a gathering together of creatures hurtful and\nterrible to man, to name their king.  Blight, mildew, darkness, mighty\nwaves, fierce winds, Will-o\u2019-the-wisps, and shadows of grim objects, told\nfearfully their doings and preferred their claims, none prevailing.  But\nwhen evening came on, a thin mist curled up, derisively, amidst the\nassemblage, and said, \u201cI gather round a man going to his own home over\npaths made by his daily footsteps; and he becomes at once helpless and\ntame as a child.  The lights meant to assist him, then betray.  You find\nhim wandering, or need the aid of other Terrors to subdue him.  I am,\nalone, confusion to him.\u201d  And all the assemblage bowed before the mist,\nand made it king, and set it on the brow of many a mountain, where, when\nit is not doing evil, it may be often seen to this day.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, I like that fable: only I am not quite clear about the\nmeaning.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You had no doubt about mine.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Is the mist calumny, Milverton?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  No, prejudice, I am sure.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Familiarity with the things around us, obscuring knowledge?\n\n_Milverton_.  I would rather not explain.  Each of you make your own\nfable of it.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, if ever I make a fable, it shall be one of the\nold-fashioned sort, with animals for the speakers, and a good easy moral.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Not a thing requiring the notes of seven German\nmetaphysicians.  I must go and talk a little to my friends the trees, and\nsee if I can get any explanation from them.  It is turning out a\nbeautiful day after all, notwithstanding my praise of its solidity.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\n\nWE met as usual at our old spot on the lawn for our next reading.  I\nforget what took place before reading, except that Ellesmere was very\njocose about our reading \u201cFiction\u201d in-doors, and the following \u201cNovember\nEssay,\u201d as he called it, \u201cunder a jovial sun, and with the power of\ngetting up and walking away from each other to any extent.\u201d\n\n\n\nON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS.\n\n\nThe \u201cIliad\u201d for war; the \u201cOdyssey\u201d for wandering; but where is the great\ndomestic epic?  Yet it is but commonplace to say, that passions may rage\nround a tea-table, which would not have misbecome men dashing at one\nanother in war-chariots; and evolutions of patience and temper are\nperformed at the fireside, worthy to be compared with the Retreat of the\nTen Thousand.  Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone\nin a wilderness; but social martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar.\n\nWe may blind ourselves to it if we like, but the hatreds and disgusts\nthat there are behind friendship, relationship, service, and, indeed,\nproximity of all kinds, is one of the darkest spots upon earth.  The\nvarious relations of life, which bring people together, cannot, as we\nknow, be perfectly fulfilled except in a state where there will, perhaps,\nbe no occasion for any of them.  It is no harm, however, to endeavour to\nsee whether there are any methods which may make these relations in the\nleast degree more harmonious now.\n\nIn the first place, if people are to live happily together, they must not\nfancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their lives have\nbeen exactly similar up to the present time, that they started exactly\nalike, and that they are to be for the future of the same mind.  A\nthorough conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be\nassured of in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton\u2019s law is to\nastronomy.  Sometimes men have a knowledge of it with regard to the world\nin general: they do not expect the outer world to agree with them in all\npoints, but are vexed at not being able to drive their own tastes and\nopinions into those they live with.  Diversities distress them.  They\nwill not see that there are many forms of virtue and wisdom.  Yet we\nmight as well say, \u201cWhy all these stars; why this difference; why not all\none star?\u201d\n\nMany of the rules for people living together in peace follow from the\nabove.  For instance, not to interfere unreasonably with others, not to\nridicule their tastes, not to question and re-question their resolves,\nnot to indulge in perpetual comment on their proceedings, and to delight\nin their having other pursuits than ours, are all based upon a thorough\nperception of the simple fact that they are not we.\n\nAnother rule for living happily with others is to avoid having stock\nsubjects of disputation.  It mostly happens, when people live much\ntogether, that they come to have certain set topics, around which, from\nfrequent dispute, there is such a growth of angry words, mortified\nvanity, and the like, that the original subject of difference becomes a\nstanding subject for quarrel; and there is a tendency in all minor\ndisputes to drift down to it.\n\nAgain, if people wish to live well together, they must not hold too much\nto logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient\nreason.  Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to married people, when\nhe said, \u201cWretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness, who\nshould be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute detail\nof a domestic day.\u201d  But the application should be much more general than\nhe made it.  There is no time for such reasonings, and nothing that is\nworth them.  And when we recollect how two lawyers, or two politicians,\ncan go on contending, and that there is no end of one-sided reasoning on\nany subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best mode\nfor arriving at truth.  But certainly it is not the way to arrive at good\ntemper.\n\nIf you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon\nthose with whom you live.  The number of people who have taken out\njudges\u2019 patents for themselves is very large in any society.  Now it\nwould be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising\nhis actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism.  It would be like\nliving between the glasses of a microscope.  But these self-elected\njudges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they\njudge brought before them in the guise of culprits.\n\nOne of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded to is that\nwhich may be called criticism over the shoulder.  \u201cHad I been consulted,\u201d\n\u201cHad you listened to me,\u201d \u201cBut you always will,\u201d and such short scraps of\nsentences may remind many of us of dissertations which we have suffered\nand inflicted, and of which we cannot call to mind any soothing effect.\n\nAnother rule is, not to let familiarity swallow up all courtesy.  Many of\nus have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such things as we\nsay about strangers behind their backs.  There is no place, however,\nwhere real politeness is of more value than where we mostly think it\nwould be superfluous.  You may say more truth, or rather speak out more\nplainly, to your associates, but not less courteously than you do to\nstrangers.\n\nAgain, we must not expect more from the society of our friends and\ncompanions than it can give, and especially must not expect contrary\nthings.  It is something arrogant to talk of travelling over other minds\n(mind being, for what we know, infinite); but still we become familiar\nwith the upper views, tastes, and tempers of our associates.  And it is\nhardly in man to estimate justly what is familiar to him.  In travelling\nalong at night, as Hazlitt says, we catch a glimpse into cheerful-looking\nrooms with light blazing in them, and we conclude involuntarily how happy\nthe inmates must be.  Yet there is heaven and hell in those rooms\u2014the\nsame heaven and hell that we have known in others.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nThere are two great classes of promoters of social happiness\u2014cheerful\npeople, and people who have some reticence.  The latter are more secure\nbenefits to society even than the former.  They are non-conductors of all\nthe heats and animosities around them.  To have peace in a house, or a\nfamily, or any social circle, the members of it must beware of passing on\nhasty and uncharitable speeches, which, the whole of the context seldom\nbeing told, is often not conveying but creating mischief.  They must be\nvery good people to avoid doing this; for let Human Nature say what it\nwill, it likes sometimes to look on at a quarrel, and that not altogether\nfrom ill-nature, but from a love of excitement, for the same reason that\nCharles II. liked to attend the debates in the Lords, because they were\n\u201cas good as a play.\u201d\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nWe come now to the consideration of temper, which might have been\nexpected to be treated first.  But to cut off the means and causes of bad\ntemper is, perhaps, of as much importance as any direct dealing with the\ntemper itself.  Besides, it is probable that in small social circles\nthere is more suffering from unkindness than ill-temper.  Anger is a\nthing that those who live under us suffer more from than those who live\nwith us.  But all the forms of ill-humour and sour-sensitiveness, which\nespecially belong to equal intimacy (though indeed, they are common to\nall), are best to be met by impassiveness.  When two sensitive persons\nare shut up together, they go on vexing each other with a reproductive\nirritability. {93}  But sensitive and hard people get on well together.\nThe supply of temper is not altogether out of the usual laws of supply\nand demand.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nIntimate friends and relations should be careful when they go out into\nthe world together, or admit others to their own circle, that they do not\nmake a bad use of the knowledge which they have gained of each other by\ntheir intimacy.  Nothing is more common than this, and did it not mostly\nproceed from mere carelessness, it would be superlatively ungenerous.\nYou seldom need wait for the written life of a man to hear about his\nweaknesses, or what are supposed to be such, if you know his intimate\nfriends, or meet him in company with them.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nLastly, in conciliating those we live with, it is most surely done, not\nby consulting their interests, nor by giving way to their opinions, so\nmuch as by not offending their tastes.  The most refined part of us lies\nin this region of taste, which is perhaps a result of our whole being\nrather than a part of our nature, and, at any rate, is the region of our\nmost subtle sympathies and antipathies.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nIt may be said that if the great principles of Christianity were attended\nto, all such rules, suggestions, and observations as the above would be\nneedless.  True enough!  Great principles are at the bottom of all\nthings; but to apply them to daily life, many little rules, precautions,\nand insights are needed.  Such things hold a middle place between real\nlife and principles, as form does between matter and spirit, moulding the\none and expressing the other.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Quite right that last part.  Everybody must have known\nreally good people, with all Christian temper, but having so little\nChristian prudence as to do a great deal of mischief in society.\n\n_Dunsford_.  There is one case, my dear Milverton, which I do not think\nyou have considered: the case where people live unhappily together, not\nfrom any bad relations between them, but because they do not agree about\nthe treatment of others.  A just person, for instance, who would bear\nanything for himself or herself, must remonstrate, at the hazard of any\ndisagreement, at injustice to others.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes.  That, however, is a case to be decided upon higher\nconsiderations than those I have been treating of.  A man must do his\nduty in the way of preventing injustice, and take what comes of it.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  For people to live happily together, the real secret is\nthat they should not live too much together.  Of course, you cannot say\nthat; it would sound harsh, and cut short the essay altogether.\n\nAgain, you talk about tastes and \u201cregion of subtle sympathies,\u201d and all\nthat.  I have observed that if people\u2019s vanity is pleased, they live well\nenough together.  Offended vanity is the great separator.  You hear a man\n(call him B) saying that he is really not himself before So-and-so; tell\nhim that So-and-so admires him very much and is himself rather abashed\nbefore B, and B is straightway comfortable, and they get on harmoniously\ntogether, and you hear no more about subtle sympathies or antipathies.\n\n_Dunsford_.  What a low view you do take of things sometimes, Ellesmere!\n\n_Milverton_.  I should not care how low it was, but it is not fair\u2014at\nleast, it does not contain the whole matter.  In the very case he has\nput, there was a subtle embarrassment between B and So-and-so.  Well,\nnow, let these people not merely meet occasionally, but be obliged to\nlive together, without any such explanation as Ellesmere has imagined,\nand they will be very uncomfortable from causes that you cannot impute to\nvanity.  It takes away much of the savour of life to live amongst those\nwith whom one has not anything like one\u2019s fair value.  It may not be\nmortified vanity, but unsatisfied sympathy, which causes this discomfort.\nB thinks that the other does not know him; he feels that he has no place\nwith the other.  When there is intense admiration on one side, there is\nhardly a care in the mind of the admiring one as to what estimation he is\nheld in.  But, in ordinary cases, some clearly defined respect and\nacknowledgment of worth is needed on both sides.  See how happy a man is\nin any office or service who is acknowledged to do something well.  How\ncomfortable he is with his superiors!  He has his place.  It is not\nexactly a satisfaction of his vanity, but an acknowledgment of his useful\nexistence that contents him.  I do not mean to say that there are not\ninnumerable claims for acknowledgment of merit and service made by\nrampant vanity and egotism, which claims cannot be satisfied, ought not\nto be satisfied, and which, being unsatisfied, embitter people.  But I\nthink your word Vanity will not explain all the feelings we have been\ntalking about.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Perhaps not.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Certainly not.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, at any rate, you will admit that there is a class of\ndreadfully humble people who make immense claims at the very time that\nthey are explaining that they have no claims.  They say they know they\ncannot be esteemed; they are well aware that they are not wanted, and so\non, all the while making it a sort of grievance and a claim that they are\nnot what they know themselves not to be; whereas, if they did but fall\nback upon their humility, and keep themselves quiet about their demerits,\nthey would be strong then, and in their place and happy, doing what they\ncould.\n\n_Milverton_.  It must be confessed that these people do make their\nhumility somewhat obnoxious.  Yet, after all, you allow that they know\ntheir deficiencies, and they only say, \u201cI know I have not much to\nrecommend me, but I wish to be loved, nevertheless.\u201d\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Ah, if they only said it a few times!  Besides, there is a\nlittle envy mixed up with the humility that I mean.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Travelling is a great trial of people\u2019s ability to live\ntogether.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes.  Lavater says that you do not know a man until you\nhave divided an inheritance with him; but I think a long journey with him\nwill do.\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, and what is it in travelling that makes people\ndisagree?  Not direct selfishness, but injudicious management; stupid\nregrets, for instance, at things not being different from what they are,\nor from what they might have been, if \u201cthe other route\u201d had been chosen;\nfellow-travellers punishing each other with each other\u2019s tastes; getting\nstock subjects of disputation; laughing unseasonably at each other\u2019s\nvexations and discomforts; and endeavouring to settle everything by the\nforce of sufficient reason, instead of by some authorised will, or by\ntossing up.  Thus, in the short time of a journey, almost all modes and\ncauses of human disagreement are brought into action.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  My favourite one not being the least\u2014over-much of each\nother\u2019s company.\n\nFor my part, I think one of the greatest bores of companionship is, not\nmerely that people wish to fit tastes and notions on you just as they\nmight the first pair of ready-made shoes they meet with, a process\namusing enough to the bystander, but exquisitely uncomfortable to the\nperson being ready-shod: but that they bore you with never-ending talk\nabout their pursuits, even when they know that you do not work in the\nsame groove with them, and that they cannot hope to make you do so.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Nobody can accuse you of that fault, Ellesmere: I never\nheard you dilate much upon anything that interested you, though I have\nknown you have some pet subject, and to be working at it for months.  But\nthis comes of your coldness of nature.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, it might bear a more favourable construction.  But to\ngo back to the essay.  It only contemplates the fact of people living\ntogether as equals, if we may so say; but in general, of course, you must\nadd some other relationship or connection than that of merely being\ntogether.\n\n_Milverton_.  I had not overlooked that; but there are certain general\nrules in the matter that may be applied to nearly all relationship, just\nas I have taken that one from Johnson, applied by him to married life,\nabout not endeavouring to settle all things by reasoning, and have given\nit a general application which, I believe, it will bear.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  There is one thing that I should think must often make\nwomen very unreasonable and unpleasant companions.  Oh, you may both hold\nup your hands and eyes, but I am not married, and can say what I please.\nOf course you put on the proper official look of astonishment; and I will\nduly report it.  But I was going to say that Chivalry, which has\ndoubtless done a great deal of good, has also done a great deal of harm.\nWomen may talk the greatest unreason out of doors, and nobody kindly\ninforms them that it is unreason.  They do not talk much before clever\nmen, and when they do, their words are humoured and dandled as children\u2019s\nsayings are.  Now, I should fancy\u2014mind, I do not want either of you to\nsay that my fancy is otherwise than quite unreasonable\u2014I should fancy\nthat when women have to hear reason at home it must sound odd to them.\nThe truth is, you know, we cannot pet anything much without doing it\nmischief.  You cannot pet the intellect, any more than the will, without\ninjuring it.  Well then, again, if you put people upon a pedestal and do\na great deal of worship around them, I cannot think but the will in such\ncases must become rather corrupted, and that lessons of obedience must\nfall rather harshly\u2014\n\n_Dunsford_.  Why, you Mahometan, you Turk of a lawyer\u2014would you do away\nwith all the high things of courtesy, tenderness for the weaker, and\u2014\n\n_Milverton_.  No, I see what he means; and there is something in it.\nMany a woman is brought up in unreason and self-will from these causes\nthat he has given, as many a man from other causes; but there is one\ngreat corrective that he has omitted, and which is, that all forms,\nfashions, and outward things have a tendency to go down before realities\nwhen they come hand to hand together.  Knowledge and judgment prevail.\nGoverning is apt to fall to the right person in private as in public\naffairs.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Those who give way in public affairs, and let the men who\ncan do a thing do it, are so far wise that they know what is to be done,\nmostly.  But the very things I am arguing against are the unreason and\nself-will, which being constantly pampered, do not appreciate reason or\njust sway.  Besides, is there not a force in ill-humour and unreason to\nwhich you constantly see the wisest bend?  You will come round to my\nopinion some day.  I do not want, though, to convince you.  It is no\nbusiness of mine.\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, I may be wrong, but I think, when we come to consider\neducation, I can show you how the dangers you fear may be greatly\nobviated, without Chivalry being obliged to put on a wig and gown, and be\nwise.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Meanwhile, let us enjoy the delightful atmosphere of\ncourtesy, unreasonable sometimes, if you like, which saves many people\nbeing put down with the best arguments in the most convincing manner, or\nbeing weighed, estimated, and given way to, so as not to spoil them.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Do not tell, either of you, what I have been saying.  I\nshall always be poked up into some garret when I come to see you, if you\ndo.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I think the most curious thing, as regards people living\ntogether, is the intense ignorance they sometimes are in of each other.\nMany years ago, one or other of you said something of this kind to me,\nand I have often thought of it since.\n\n_Milverton_.  People fulfil a relation towards each other, and they only\nknow each other in that relation, especially if it is badly managed by\nthe superior one; but any way the relationship involves some ignorance.\nThey perform orbits round each other, each gyrating, too, upon his own\naxis, and there are parts of the character of each which are never\nbrought into view of the other.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I should carry this notion of yours, Milverton, farther\nthan you do.  There is a peculiar mental relation soon constituted\nbetween associates of any kind, which confines and prevents complete\nknowledge on both sides.  Each man, in some measure therefore, knows\nothers only through himself.  Tennyson makes Ulysses say,\n\n    \u201cI am a part of all that I have seen;\u201d\n\nit might have run,\n\n    \u201cI am a part of all that I have heard.\u201d\n\n_Dunsford_.  Ellesmere becoming metaphysical and transcendental!\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, well, we will leave these heights, and descend in\nlittle drops of criticism.  There are two or three things you might have\npointed out, Milverton.  Perhaps you would say that they are included in\nwhat you have said, but I think not.  You talk of the mischief of much\ncomment on each other amongst those who live together.  You might have\nshown, I think, that in the case of near friends and relations this\ncomment also deepens into interference\u2014at least it partakes of that\nnature.  Friends and relations should, therefore, be especially careful\nto avoid needless comments on each other.  They do just the contrary.\nThat is one of the reasons why they often hate one another so much.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Ellesmere!\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Protest, if you like, my dear Dunsford.\n\n    Dissentient,\n\n    1.  Because I wish it were not so.\n\n    2.  Because I am sorry that it is.\n\n                                                        (Signed) DUNSFORD.\n\n_Milverton_.  \u201cHate\u201d is too strong a word, Ellesmere; what you say would\nbe true enough, if you would put \u201care not in sympathy with.\u201d\n\n_Ellesmere_.  \u201cHave a quiet distaste for.\u201d  That is the proper medium.\nNow, to go to another matter.  You have not put the case of over-managing\npeople, who are tremendous to live with.\n\n_Milverton_.  I have spoken about \u201cinterfering unreasonably with others.\u201d\n\n_Ellesmere_.  That does not quite convey what I mean.  It is when the\nmanager and the managee are both of the same mind as to the thing to be\ndone; but the former insists, and instructs, and suggests, and foresees,\ntill the other feels that all free agency for him is gone.\n\n_Milverton_.  It is a sad thing to consider how much of their abilities\npeople turn to tiresomeness.  You see a man who would be very agreeable\nif he were not so observant: another who would be charming, if he were\ndeaf and dumb: a third delightful, if he did not vex all around him with\nsuperfluous criticism.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  A hit at me that last, I suspect.  But I shall go on.  You\nhave not, I think, made enough merit of independence in companionship.\nIf I were to put into an aphorism what I mean, I should say, Those who\ndepend wholly on companionship are the worst companions; or thus: Those\ndeserve companionship who can do without it.  There, Mr. Aphoriser\nGeneral, what do you say to that?\n\n_Milverton_.  Very good, but\u2014\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Of course a \u201cbut\u201d to other people\u2019s aphorisms, as if every\naphorism had not buts innumerable.  We critics, you know, cannot abide\ncriticism.  We do all the criticism that is needed ourselves.  I wonder\nat the presumption sometimes of you wretched authors.  But to proceed.\nYou have not said anything about the mischief of superfluous condolence\namongst people who live together.  I flatter myself that I could condole\nanybody out of all peace of mind.\n\n_Milverton_.  All depends upon whether condolence goes with the grain, or\nagainst the grain, of vanity.  I know what you mean, however: For\ninstance, it is a very absurd thing to fret much over other people\u2019s\ncourses, not considering the knowledge and discipline that there is in\nany course that a man may take.  And it is still more absurd to be\nconstantly showing the people fretted over that you are fretting over\nthem.  I think a good deal of what you call superfluous condolence would\ncome under the head of superfluous criticism.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Not altogether.  In companionship, when an evil happens to\none of the circle, the others should simply attempt to share and lighten\nit, not to expound it, or dilate on it, or make it the least darker.  The\nperson afflicted generally apprehends all the blackness sufficiently.\nNow, unjust abuse by the world is to me like the howling of the wind at\nnight when one is warm within.  Bring any draught of it into one\u2019s house\nthough, and it is not so pleasant.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Talking of companionship, do not you think there is often a\npeculiar feeling of home where age or infirmity is?  The arm-chair of the\nsick or the old is the centre of the house.  They think, perhaps, that\nthey are unimportant; but all the household hopes and cares flow to them\nand from them.\n\n_Milverton_.  I quite agree with you.  What you have just depicted is a\nbeautiful sight, especially when, as you often see, the age or infirmity\nis not in the least selfish or exacting.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  We have said a great deal about the companionship of human\nbeings; but, upon my word, we ought to have kept a few words for our dog\nfriends.  Rollo has been lolling out his great tongue, and looking\nwistfully from face to face, as we each began our talk.  A few minutes\nago he was quite concerned, thinking I was angry with you, when I would\nnot let you \u201cbut\u201d my aphorism.  I am not sure which of the three I should\nrather go out walking with now: Dunsford, Rollo, Milverton.  The middle\none is the safest companion.  I am sure not to get out of humour with\nhim.  But I have no objection to try the whole three: only I vote for\nmuch continuity of silence, as we have had floods of discussion to-day.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Agreed!\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Come, Rollo, you may bark now, as you have been silent,\nlike a wise dog, all the morning.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\n\nIT was arranged, during our walk, that Ellesmere should come and stay a\nday or two with me, and see the neighbouring cathedral, which is nearer\nmy house than Milverton\u2019s.  The visit over, I brought him back to\nWorth-Ashton.  Milverton saw us coming, walked down the hill to meet us,\nand after the usual greetings, began to talk to Ellesmere.\n\n_Milverton_.  So you have been to see our cathedral.  I say \u201cour,\u201d for\nwhen a cathedral is within ten miles of us, we feel a property in it, and\nare ready to battle for its architectural merits.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You know I am not a man to rave about cathedrals.\n\n_Milverton_.  I certainly do not expect you to do so.  To me a cathedral\nis mostly somewhat of a sad sight.  You have Grecian monuments, if\nanything so misplaced can be called Grecian, imbedded against and cutting\ninto Gothic pillars; the doors shut for the greater part of the day; only\na little bit of the building used: beadledom predominant; the clink of\nmoney here and there; white-wash in vigour; the singing indifferent; the\nsermons not indifferent but bad; and some visitors from London forming,\nperhaps, the most important part of the audience; in fact, the thing\nhaving become a show.  We look about, thinking when piety filled every\ncorner, and feel that the cathedral is too big for the Religion which is\na dried-up thing that rattles in this empty space.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  This is the boldest simile I have heard for a long time.\nMy theory about cathedrals is very different, I must confess.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Theory!\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, \u201ctheory\u201d is not the word I ought to have used\u2014feeling\nthen.  My feeling is, how strong this creature was, this worship, how\nbeautiful, how alluring, how complete; but there was something\nstronger\u2014truth.\n\n_Milverton_.  And more beautiful?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes, and far more beautiful.\n\n_Milverton_.  Doubtless, to the free spirits who brought truth forward.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You are only saying this, Milverton, to try what I will\nsay; but, despite of all sentimentalities, you sympathise with any\nemancipation of the human mind, as I do, however much the meagreness of\nProtestantism may be at times distasteful to you.\n\n_Milverton_.  I did not say I was anxious to go back.  Certainly not.\nBut what says Dunsford?  Let us sit down on his stile and hear what he\nhas to say.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I cannot talk to you about this subject.  If I tell you of\nall the merits (as they seem to me) of the Church of England, you will\nboth pick what I say to pieces, whereas if I leave you to fight on, one\nor the other will avail himself of those arguments on which our Church is\nbased.\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, Dunsford, you are very candid, and would make a\ncomplete diplomatist: truth-telling being now pronounced (rather late in\nthe day) the very acme of diplomacy.  But do you not own that our\ncathedrals are sadly misused?\n\n_Dunsford_.  Now, very likely, if more were made of them, you, and men\nwho think like you, would begin to cry out \u201csuperstition\u201d; and would\ninstantly turn round and inveigh against the uses which you now, perhaps,\nimagine for cathedrals.\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, one never can answer for oneself; but at any rate, I\ndo not see what is the meaning of building new churches in neighbourhoods\nwhere there are already the noblest buildings suitable for the same\npurposes.  Is there a church religion, and is there a cathedral religion?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You cannot make the present fill the garb of the past,\nMilverton, any more than you could make the past fill that of the\npresent.  Now, as regards the very thing you are about to discuss to-day,\nif it be the same you told us in our last walk\u2014Education: if you are only\ngoing to give us some institution for it, I daresay it may be very good\nfor to-day, or for this generation, but it will have its sere and yellow\nleaf, and there will be a time when future Milvertons, in sentimental\nmood, will moan over it, and wish they had it and all that has grown up\nto take its place at the same time.  But all this is what I have often\nheard you say yourself in other words.\n\n_Dunsford_.  This is very hard doctrine, and not quite sound, I think.\nIn getting the new gain, we always sacrifice something, and we should\nlook with some pious regard to what was good in the things which are\npast.  That good is generally one which, though it may not be equal to\nthe present, would make a most valuable supplement to it.\n\n_Milverton_.  I would try and work in the old good thing with the new,\nnot as patchwork though, but making the new thing grow out in such a way\nas to embrace the old advantage.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, we must have the essay before we branch out into our\nphilosophy.  Pleasure afterwards\u2014I will not say what comes first.\n\n\n\nEDUCATION.\n\n\nThe word education is so large, that one may almost as well put \u201cworld,\u201d\nor \u201cthe end and object of being,\u201d at the head of an essay.  It should,\ntherefore, soon be declared what such a heading does mean.  The word\neducation suggests chiefly to some minds what the State can do for those\nwhom they consider its young people\u2014the children of the poorer classes:\nto others it presents the idea of all the training that can be got for\nmoney at schools and colleges, and which can be fairly accomplished and\nshut in at the age of one-and-twenty.  This essay, however, will not be a\ntreatise on government education, or other school and college education,\nbut will only contain a few points in reference to the general subject,\nwhich may escape more methodical and enlarged discussions.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nIn the first place, as regards government education, it must be kept in\nmind that there is a danger of its being too interfering and formal, of\nits overlying private enterprise, insisting upon too much uniformity, and\ninjuring local connections and regards.  Education, even in the poorest\nacceptance of the word, is a great thing: but the harmonious intercourse\nof different ranks, if not a greater, is a more difficult one; and we\nmust not gain the former at any considerable sacrifice of the latter.\n\nThere is another point connected with this branch of the subject which\nrequires, perhaps, to be noted.  If government provision is made in any\ncase, might it not be combined with private payment in other cases, or\nenter in the way of rewards, so as to do good throughout each step of the\nsocial ladder?  The lowest kind of school education is a power, and it is\ndesirable that the gradations of this power should correspond to other\ninfluences which we know to be good.  For instance, a hard-working man\nsaves something to educate his children; if he can get a little better\neducation for them than other parents of his own rank for theirs, it is\nan incentive and a reward to him, and the child\u2019s bringing up at home is\na thing which will correspond to this better education at school.  In\nthis there are the elements at once of stability and progress.\n\nThese views may possibly seem too refined, but at any rate they require\nconsideration.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nThe next branch of the subject is the ordinary education of young persons\nnot of the poorest classes, with which the State has hitherto had little\nor nothing to do.  This may be considered under four heads: religious,\nmoral, intellectual, and physical education.  With regard to the first,\nthere is not much that can be put into rules about it.  Parents and\ntutors will naturally be anxious to impress those under their charge with\nthe religious opinions which they themselves hold.  In doing this,\nhowever, they should not omit to lay a foundation for charity towards\npeople of other religious opinions.  For this purpose, it may be\nrequisite to give a child a notion that there are other creeds besides\nthat in which it is brought up itself.  And especially, let it not\nsuppose that all good and wise people are of its church or chapel.\nHowever desirable it may appear to the person teaching that there should\nbe such a thing as unity of religion, yet as the facts of the world are\nagainst his wishes, and as this is the world which the child is to enter,\nit is well that the child should in reasonable time be informed of these\nfacts.  It may be said in reply that history sufficiently informs\nchildren on these points.  But the world of the young is the domestic\ncircle; all beyond is fabulous, unless brought home to them by comment.\nThe fact, therefore, of different opinions in religious matters being\nheld by good people should sometimes be dwelt upon, instead of being\nshunned, if we would secure a ground-work of tolerance in a child\u2019s mind.\n\n\n\nINTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.\n\n\nIn the intellectual part of education there is the absolute knowledge to\nbe acquired, and the ways of acquiring knowledge to be gained.  The\nlatter of course form the most important branch.  They can, in some\nmeasure, be taught.  Give children little to do, make much of its being\naccurately done.  This will give accuracy.  Insist upon speed in\nlearning, with careful reference to the original powers of the pupil.\nThis speed gives the habit of concentrating attention, one of the most\nvaluable of mental habits.  Then cultivate logic.  Logic is not the hard\nmatter that is fancied.  A young person, especially after a little\ngeometrical training, may soon be taught to perceive where a fallacy\nexists, and whether an argument is well sustained.  It is not, however,\nsufficient for him to be able to examine sharply and to pull to pieces.\nHe must learn how to build.  This is done by method.  The higher branches\nof method cannot be taught at first.  But you may begin by teaching\norderliness of mind.  Collecting, classifying, contrasting and weighing\nfacts, are some of the processes by which method is taught.  When these\nfour things, accuracy, attention, logic, and method are attained, the\nintellect is fairly furnished with its instruments.\n\nAs regards the things to be taught, they will vary to some extent in each\nage.  The general course of education pursued at any particular time may\nnot be the wisest by any means, and greatness will overleap it and\nneglect it, but the mass of men may go more safely and comfortably, if\nnot with the stream, at least by the side of it.\n\nIn the choice of studies too much deference should not be paid to the\nbent of a young person\u2019s mind.  Excellence in one or two things which may\nhave taken the fancy of a youth (or which really may suit his genius)\nwill ill compensate for a complete ignorance of those branches of study\nwhich are very repugnant to him; and which are, therefore, not likely to\nbe learnt when he has freedom in the choice of his studies.\n\nAmongst the first things to be aimed at in the intellectual part of\neducation is variety of pursuit.  A human being, like a tree, if it is to\nattain to perfect symmetry, must have light and air given to it from all\nquarters.  This may be done without making men superficial.  Scientific\nmethod may be acquired without many sciences being learnt.  But one or\ntwo great branches of science must be accurately known.  So, too, the\nchoice works of antiquity may be thoroughly appreciated without extensive\nreacting.  And passing on from mere learning of any kind, a variety of\npursuits, even in what may be called accomplishments, is eminently\nserviceable.  Much may be said of the advantage of keeping a man to a few\npursuits, and of the great things done thereby in the making of pins and\nneedles.  But in this matter we are not thinking of the things that are\nto be done, but of the persons who are to do them.  Not wealth but men.\nA number of one-sided men may make a great nation, though I much incline\nto doubt that; but such a nation will not contain a number of great men.\n\nThe very advantage that flows from division of labour, and the probable\nconsequences that men\u2019s future bread-getting pursuits will be more and\nmore sub-divided, and therefore limited, make it the more necessary that\na man should begin life with a broad basis of interest in many things\nwhich may cultivate his faculties and develop his nature.  This\nmultifariousness of pursuit is needed also in the education of the poor.\nCivilisation has made it easy for a man to brutalise himself: how is this\nto be counteracted but by endowing him with many pursuits which may\ndistract him from vice?  It is not that kind of education which leads to\nno employment in after-life that will do battle with vice.  But when\neducation enlarges the field of life-long good pursuits, it becomes\nformidable to the soul\u2019s worst enemies.\n\n\n\nMORAL EDUCATION.\n\n\nIn considering moral education we must recollect that there are three\nagents in this matter\u2014the child himself, the influence of his grown-up\nfriends, and that of his contemporaries.  All that his grown-up friends\ntell him in the way of experience goes for very little, except in\npalpable matters.  They talk of abstractions which he cannot comprehend:\nand the \u201cArabian Nights\u201d is a truer world to him than that they talk of.\nStill, though they cannot furnish experience, they can give motives.\nIndeed, in their daily intercourse with the child, they are always doing\nso.  For instance, truth, courage, and kindness are the great moral\nqualities to be instilled.  Take courage, in its highest form\u2014moral\ncourage.  If a child perpetually hears such phrases (and especially if\nthey are applied to his own conduct), as, \u201cWhat people will say,\u201d \u201cHow\nthey will look at you,\u201d \u201cWhat they will think,\u201d and the like, it tends to\ndestroy all just self-reliance in that child\u2019s mind, and to set up\ninstead an exaggerated notion of public opinion, the greatest tyrant of\nthese times.  People can see this in such an obvious thing as animal\ncourage.  They will avoid over-cautioning children against physical\ndangers, knowing that the danger they talk much about will become a\nbug-bear to the child which it may never get rid of.  But a similar peril\nlurks in the application of moral motives.  Truth, courage, and kindness\nare likely to be learnt, or not, by children, according as they hear and\nreceive encouragement in the direction of these pre-eminent qualities.\nWhen attempt is made to frighten a child with these worldly maxims, \u201cWhat\nwill be said of you?\u201d \u201cAre you like such a one?\u201d and such things, it is\nmeant to draw him under the rule of grown-up respectability.  The last\nthing thought of by the parent or teacher is, that such maxims will bring\nthe child under the especial guidance of the most unscrupulous of his\ncontemporaries.  They will use ridicule and appeal to their little world,\nwhich will be his world, and ask, \u201cWhat will be said\u201d of him.  There\nshould be some stuff in him of his own to meet these awful generalities.\n\n\n\nPHYSICAL EDUCATION.\n\n\nThe physical education of children is a very simple matter, too simple to\nbe much attended to without great perseverance and resolution on the part\nof those who care for the children.  It consists, as we all know, in good\nair, simple diet, sufficient exercise, and judicious clothing.  The first\nrequisite is the most important, and by far the most frequently\nneglected.  This neglect is not so unreasonable as it seems.  It arises\nfrom pure ignorance.  If the mass of mankind knew what scientific men\nknow about the functions of the air, they would be as careful in getting\na good supply of it as of their other food.  All the people that ever\nwere supposed to die of poison in the middle ages, and that means nearly\neverybody whose death was worth speculating about, are not so many as\nthose who die poisoned by bad air in the course of any given year.  Even\na slightly noxious thing, which is constant, affecting us every moment of\nthe day, must have considerable influence; but the air we breathe is not\na thing that slightly affects us, but one of the most important elements\nof life.  Moreover, children are the most affected by impurity of air.\nWe need not weary ourselves with much statistics to ascertain this.  One\nor two broad facts will assure us of it.  In Nottingham there is a\ndistrict called Byron Ward, \u201cthe densest and worst-conditioned quarter of\nthe town.\u201d  A table has been made by Mr. William Hawksley of the\nmortality of equal populations in different parts of the town:\n\n    \u201cOn comparing the diagram No. 1, relating to Park Ward, with the\n    diagram No. 7, relating to Byron Ward, it will be seen that the\n    heavier pressure of the causes of mortality occasions in the latter\n    district such an undue destruction of early life, that towards 100\n    deaths, however occurring, Byron Ward contributes fifty per cent.\n    more of children under five years of age than the Park Ward, for the\n    former sends sixty children to an early grave, while the latter sends\n    only forty.\u201d {116a}\n\nMr. Hawksley, the former witness alluded to, goes on to say\u2014\n\n    \u201cIt has been long known that, with increase of years, up to that\n    period of life which has been denominated the second childhood, the\n    human constitution becomes gradually more resistful, and as it were\n    slowly hardened against the repeated attacks of those more acute\n    disorders, incident to an inferior degree of sanitary civilisation,\n    by which large portions of an infant population are continually\n    overcome and rapidly swept away.  From the operation of these and\n    more extraneous influences of a disturbing character, an infant\n    population is almost entirely exempted; and on this account it is\n    considered that an infant population constitutes, as it were, a\n    delicate barometer, from which we may derive more early and more\n    certain indications of the presence and comparative force of local\n    causes of mortality and disease than can be obtained from the more\n    general methods of investigation usually pursued.\u201d\n\nThe above evidence is confirmed by Mr. Toynbee:\u2014\n\n    \u201cThe disease of hydrocephalus, of water in the brain, so fatal to\n    children, I find associated with symptoms of scrofula, and arising in\n    abundance in these close rooms.  I believe water in the brain, in the\n    class of patients whom I visit, to be almost wholly a scrofulous\n    affection.\u201d  {116b}\n\nBut supposing people aware of the necessity for good air, and therefore\nfor ventilation, what is to be done?  In houses in great towns certainly,\nand I should say in all houses, some of the care and expense that are\ndevoted to ornamental work, which when done is often a care, a trouble,\nan eyesore, and a mischief, should be given to modes of ventilation,\n{117a} sound building, abundant access of light, largeness of\nsleeping-rooms, and such useful things.  Less ormolu and tinsel of all\nkinds in the drawing-rooms, and sweeter air in the regions above.\nSimilar things may be done for and by the poor. {117b}  And it need\nhardly be said that those people who care for their children, if of any\nenlightenment at all, will care greatly for the sanitary condition of\ntheir neighbourhood generally.  At present you will find at many a rich\nman\u2019s door {117c} a nuisance which is poisoning the atmosphere that his\nchildren are to breathe, but which he could entirely cure for less than\none day\u2019s ordinary expenses.\n\nI am afraid that ventilation is very little attended to in school-rooms,\neither for rich or poor.  Now it may be deliberately said that there is\nvery little learned in any school-room that can compensate for the\nmischief of its being learned in the midst of impure air.  This is a\nthing which parents must look to, for the grown-up people in the\nschool-rooms, though suffering grievously themselves from insufficient\nventilation, will be unobservant of it. {118}  In every system of\ngovernment inspection, ventilation must occupy a prominent part.\n\nThe advantage of simple food for children is a thing that people have\nfound out.  And as regards exercise, children happily make great efforts\nto provide a sufficiency of this for themselves.  In clothing, the folly\nand conformity of grown-up people enter again.  Loving mothers, in\nvarious parts of the world, carry about at present, I believe, and\ncertainly in times past, carried their little children strapped to a\nboard, with nearly as little power of motion as the board itself.  Could\nwe get the returns of stunted miserable beings, or of deaths, from this\ncause, they would be something portentous.  Less in degree, but not less\nfatally absurd in principle, are many of the strappings, bandages, and\nincipient stays for children amongst us.  They are all mischievous.\nAllow children, at any rate, some freedom of limbs, some opportunity of\nbeing graceful and healthy.  Give Nature\u2014dear motherly, much-abused\nNature\u2014some chance of forming these little ones according to the\nbeneficent intentions of Providence, and not according to the angular\ndesigns of ill-educated men and women.\n\nI do not say that attention to the above matters of good air, judicious\nclothing, and freedom from bandages, will absolutely secure health,\nbecause these very things may have been so ill attended to in the parents\nor in the parental stock as to have introduced special maladies; but at\nleast they are the most important objects to be minded now; and, perhaps,\nthe more to be minded in the children of those who have suffered most\nfrom neglect in these particulars.\n\nWhen we are considering the health of children, it is imperative not to\nomit the importance of keeping their brains fallow, as it were, for\nseveral of the first years of their existence.  The mischief perpetrated\nby a contrary course in the shape of bad health, peevish temper, and\ndeveloped vanity, is incalculable.  It would not be just to attribute\nthis altogether to the vanity of parents; they are influenced by a\nnatural fear lest their children should not have all the advantages of\nother children.  Some infant prodigy which is a standard of mischief\nthroughout its neighbourhood misleads them.  But parents may be assured\nthat this early work is not by any means all gain, even in the way of\nwork.  I suspect it is a loss; and that children who begin their\neducation late, as it would be called, will rapidly overtake those who\nhave been in harness long before them.  And what advantage can it be that\nthe child knows more at six years old than its compeers, especially if\nthis is to be gained by a sacrifice of health which may never be\nregained?  There may be some excuse for this early book-work in the case\nof those children who are to live by manual labour.  It is worth while,\nperhaps, to run the risk of some physical injury to them, having only\ntheir early years in which we can teach them book-knowledge.  The chance\nof mischief, too, will be less, being more likely to be counteracted by\ntheir after-life.  But for a child who has to be at book-work for the\nfirst twenty-one years of its life, what folly it is to exhaust in the\nleast the mental energy, which, after all, is its surest implement.\n\nA similar course of argument applies to taking children early to church,\nand to over-developing their minds in any way.  There is no knowing,\nmoreover, the disgust and weariness that may grow up in the minds of\nyoung persons from their attention being prematurely claimed.  We are\nnow, however, looking at early study as a matter of health; and we may\ncertainly put it down in the same class with impure air, stimulating\ndiet, unnecessary bandages, and other manifest physical disadvantages.\nCivilised life, as it advances, does not seem to have so much repose in\nit, that we need begin early in exciting the mind, for fear of the man\nbeing too lethargical hereafter.\n\n\n\nEDUCATION OF WOMEN.\n\n\nIt seems needful that something should be said specially about the\neducation of women.  As regards their intellects they have been unkindly\ntreated\u2014too much flattered, too little respected.  They are shut up in a\nworld of conventionalities, and naturally believe that to be the only\nworld.  The theory of their education seems to be, that they should not\nbe made companions to men, and some would say, they certainly are not.\nThese critics, however, in the high imaginations they justly form of what\nwomen\u2019s society might be to men, forget, perhaps, how excellent a thing\nit is already.  Still the criticism is not by any means wholly unjust.\nIt appears rather as if there had been a falling off since the olden\ntimes in the education of women.  A writer of modern days, arguing on the\nother side, has said, that though we may talk of the Latin and Greek of\nLady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth, yet we are to consider that that was\nthe only learning of the time, and that many a modern lady may be far\nbetter instructed, although she knew nothing of Latin and Greek.  Certain\nit is, she may know more facts, have read more books: but this does not\nassure us that she may not be less conversable, less companionable.\nWherein does the cultivated and thoughtful man differ from the common\nman?  In the method of his discourse.  His questions upon a subject in\nwhich he is ignorant are full of interest.  His talk has a groundwork of\nreason.  This rationality must not be supposed to be dulness.  Folly is\ndull.  Now, would women be less charming if they had more power, or at\nleast more appreciation, of reasoning?  Their flatterers tell them that\ntheir intuition is such that they need not man\u2019s slow processes of\nthought.  One would be very sorry to have a grave question of law that\nconcerned oneself decided upon by intuitive judges, or a question of fact\nby intuitive jurymen.  And so of all human things that have to be\ncanvassed, it is better, and more amusing too, that they should be\ndiscussed according to reason.  Moreover, the exercise of the reasoning\nfaculties gives much of the pleasure which there is in solid\nacquirements; so that the obvious facts in life and history will hardly\nbe acquired by those who are not in the habit of reasoning upon them.\nHence it comes, that women have less interest in great topics, and less\nknowledge of them, than they might have.\n\nAgain, if either sex requires logical education, it is theirs.  The sharp\npractice of the world drives some logic into the most vague of men; women\nare not so schooled.\n\nBut, supposing the deficiency we have been considering to be admitted,\nhow is it to be remedied?  Women\u2019s education must be made such as to\nensure some accuracy and reasoning.  This may be done with any subject of\neducation, and is done with men, whatever they learn, because they are\nexpected to produce and use their requirements.  But the greatest object\nof intellectual education, the improvement of the mental powers, is as\nneedful for one sex as the other, and requires the same means in both\nsexes.  The same accuracy, attention, logic, and method that are\nattempted in the education of men should be aimed at in that of women.\nThis will never be sufficiently attended to, as there are no immediate\nand obvious fruits from it.  And, therefore, as it is probable, from the\ndifferent career of women to that of men, that whatever women study will\nnot be studied with the same method and earnestness as it would be by\nmen, what a peculiar advantage there is in any study for them, in which\nno proficiency whatever can be made without some use of most of the\nqualities we desire for them.  Geometry, for instance, is such a study.\nIt may appear pedantic, but I must confess that Euclid seems to me a book\nfor the young of both sexes.  The severe rules upon which the acquisition\nof the dead languages is built would of course be a great means for\nattaining the logical habits in question.  But Latin and Greek is a\ndeeper pedantry for women than geometry, and much less desirable on many\naccounts: and geometry would, perhaps, suffice to teach them what\nreasoning is.  I daresay, too, there are accomplishments which might be\ntaught scientifically; and so even the prejudice against the manifest\nstudy of science by women be conciliated.  But the appreciation of\nreasoning must be got somehow.\n\nIt is a narrow view of things to suppose that a just cultivation of\nwomen\u2019s mental powers will take them out of their sphere: it will only\nenlarge that sphere.  The most cultivated women perform their common\nduties best.  They see more in those duties.  They can do more.  Lady\nJane Grey would, I daresay, have bound up a wound, or managed a\nhousehold, with any unlearned woman of her day.  Queen Elizabeth did\nmanage a kingdom: and we find no pedantry in her way of doing it.\n\nPeople who advocate a better training for women must not, necessarily, be\nsupposed to imagine that men and women are by education to be made alike,\nand are intended to fulfil most of the same offices.  There seems reason\nfor thinking that a boundary line exists between the intellects of men\nand women which, perhaps, cannot be passed over from either side.  But,\nat any rate, taking the whole nature of both sexes, and the inevitable\ncircumstances which cause them to differ, there must be such a difference\nbetween men and women that the same intellectual training applied to both\nwould produce most dissimilar results.  It has not, however, been\nproposed in these pages to adopt the same training: and would have been\nstill less likely to be proposed if it could be shown that such training\nwould tend to make men and women unpleasantly similar to each other.  The\nutmost that has been thought of here is to make more of women\u2019s\nfaculties, not by any means to translate them into men\u2019s\u2014if such a thing\nwere possible, which, we may venture to say, is not.  There are some\nthings that are good for all trees\u2014light, air, room\u2014but no one expects by\naffording some similar advantages of this kind to an oak and a beech, to\nfind them assimilate, though by such means the best of each may be\nproduced.\n\nMoreover, it should be recollected that the purpose of education is not\nalways to foster natural gifts, but sometimes to bring out faculties that\nmight otherwise remain dormant; and especially so far as to make the\npersons educated cognisant of excellence in those faculties in others.  A\ncertain tact and refinement belong to women, in which they have little to\nlearn from the first: men, too, who attain some portion of these\nqualities, are greatly the better for them, and I should imagine not less\nacceptable on that account to women.  So, on the other side, there may be\nan intellectual cultivation for women which may seem a little against the\ngrain, which would not, however, injure any of their peculiar\ngifts\u2014would, in fact, carry those gifts to the highest, and would\nincrease withal, both to men and women, the pleasure of each other\u2019s\nsociety.\n\nThere is a branch of general education which is not thought at all\nnecessary for women; as regards which, indeed, it is well if they are not\nbrought up to cultivate the opposite.  Women are not taught to be\ncourageous.  Indeed, to some persons courage may seem as unnecessary for\nwomen as Latin and Greek.  Yet there are few things that would tend to\nmake women happier in themselves, and more acceptable to those with whom\nthey live, than courage.  There are many women of the present day,\nsensible women in other things, whose panic-terrors are a frequent source\nof discomfort to themselves and those around them.  Now, it is a great\nmistake to imagine that harshness must go with courage; and that the\nbloom of gentleness and sympathy must all be rubbed off by that vigour of\nmind which gives presence of mind, enables a person to be useful in\nperil, and makes the desire to assist overcome that sickliness of\nsensibility which can only contemplate distress and difficulty.  So far\nfrom courage being unfeminine, there is a peculiar grace and dignity in\nthose beings who have little active power of attack or defence, passing\nthrough danger with a moral courage which is equal to that of the\nstrongest.  We see this in great things.  We perfectly appreciate the\nsweet and noble dignity of an Anne Bullen, a Mary Queen of Scots, or a\nMarie Antoinette.  We see that it is grand for these delicately-bred,\nhigh-nurtured, helpless personages to meet Death with a silence and a\nconfidence like his own.  But there would be a similar dignity in women\u2019s\nbearing small terrors with fortitude.  There is no beauty in fear.  It is\na mean, ugly, dishevelled creature.  No statue can be made of it that a\nwoman would like to see herself like.\n\nWomen are pre-eminent in steady endurance of tiresome suffering: they\nneed not be far behind men in a becoming courage to meet that which is\nsudden and sharp.  The dangers and the troubles, too, which we may\nventure to say they now start at unreasonably, are many of them mere\ncreatures of the imagination\u2014such as, in their way, disturb high-mettled\nanimals brought up to see too little, and therefore frightened at any\nleaf blown across the road.\n\nWe may be quite sure that, without losing any of the most delicate and\nrefined of feminine graces, women may be taught not to give way to\nunreasonable fears, which should belong no more to the fragile than to\nthe robust.\n\nThere is no doubt that courage may in some measure be taught.  We agree\nthat the lower kinds of courage are matter of habit, therefore of\nteaching: and the same thing holds good to some extent of all courage.\nCourage is as contagious as fear.  The saying is, that the brave are the\nsons and daughters of the brave; but we might as truly say that they must\nbe brought up by the brave.  The great novelist, when he wants a coward\ndescended from a valorous race, does well to take him from his clan and\nbring him up in an unwarlike home. {126}  Indeed, the heroic example of\nother days is in great part the source of courage of each generation; and\nmen walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onwards\nby the shades of the brave that were.  In civil courage, moral courage,\nor courage shown in the minute circumstances of everyday life, the same\nlaw is true.  Courage may be taught by precept, enforced by example, and\nis good to be taught to men, women, and children.\n\n\n\nEDUCATION TO HAPPINESS.\n\n\nIt is a curious phenomenon in human affairs, that some of those matters\nin which education is most potent should have been amongst the least\nthought of as branches of it.  What you teach a boy of Latin and Greek\nmay be good; but these things are with him but a little time of each day\nin his after-life.  What you teach him of direct moral precepts may be\nvery good seed: it may grow up, especially if it have sufficient moisture\nfrom experience; but then, again, a man is, happily, not doing obvious\nright or wrong all day long.  What you teach him of any bread-getting art\nmay be of some import to him, as to the quantity and quality of bread he\nwill get; but he is not always with his art.  With himself he is always.\nHow important, then, it is, whether you have given him a happy or a\nmorbid turn of mind; whether the current of his life is a clear wholesome\nstream, or bitter as Marah.  The education to happiness is a possible\nthing\u2014not to a happiness supposed to rest upon enjoyments of any kind,\nbut to one built upon content and resignation.  This is the best part of\nphilosophy.  This enters into the \u201cwisdom\u201d spoken of in the Scriptures.\nNow it can be taught.  The converse is taught every day and all day long.\n\nTo take an example.  A sensitive disposition may descend to a child; but\nit is also very commonly increased, and often created.  Captiousness,\nsensitiveness, and a Martha-like care for the things of this world, are\noften the direct fruits of education.  All these faults of the character,\nand they are amongst the greatest, may be summed up in a disproportionate\ncare for little things.  This is rather a growing evil.  The painful\nneatness and exactness of modern life foster it.  Long peace favours it.\nTrifles become more important, great evils being kept away.  And so, the\ntide of small wishes and requirements gains upon us fully as fast as we\ncan get out of its way by our improved means of satisfying them.  Now the\nunwholesome concern that many parents and governors manifest as to small\nthings must have a great influence on the governed.  You hear a child\nreprimanded about a point of dress, or some trivial thing, as if it had\ncommitted a treachery.  The criticisms, too, which it hears upon others\nare often of the same kind.  Small omissions, small commissions, false\nshame, little stumbling-blocks of offence, trifling grievances of the\nkind that Dr. Johnson, who had known hunger, stormed at Mrs. Thrale for\ntalking about, are made much of; general dissatisfaction is expressed\nthat things are not complete, and that everything in life is not turned\nout as neat as a Long-Acre carriage; commands are expected to be\nfulfilled by agents, upon very rapid and incomplete orders, exactly to\nthe mind of the person ordering;\u2014these ways, to which children are very\nattentive, teach them in their turn to be querulous, sensitive, and full\nof small cares and wishes.  And when you have made a child like this, can\nyou make a world for him that will satisfy him?  Tax your civilisation to\nthe uttermost: a punctilious, tiresome disposition expects more.  Indeed,\nNature, with her vague and flowing ways, cannot at all fit in with a\nright-angled person.  Besides, there are other precise, angular\ncreatures, and these sharp-edged persons wound each other terribly.  Of\nall the things which you can teach people, after teaching them to trust\nin God, the most important is, to put out of their hearts any expectation\nof perfection, according to their notions, in this world.  This\nexpectation is at the bottom of a great deal of the worldliness we hear\nso much reprehended, and necessarily gives to little things a most\nirrational importance.\n\nObserve the effect of this disproportionate care for little things in the\ndisputes of men.  A man who does so care, has a garment embroidered with\nhooks which catch at everything that passes by.  He finds many more\ncauses of offence than other men; and each offence is a more bitter thing\nto him than to others.  He does not expect to be offended.  Poor man!  He\ngoes through life wondering that he is the subject of general attack, and\nthat the world is so quarrelsome.\n\nThe result of a bad education in developing undue care for trifles may be\nseen in its effect on domestic government and government in general.  If\nthose in power have this fault, they will make the persons under them\nmiserable by petty, constant blame; or they will make them indifferent to\nall blame.  If this fault is in the governed, they will captiously object\nto all the ways and plans of their superiors, not knowing the difficulty\nof doing anything; they will expect miracles of attention, justice, and\ntemper, which the rough-hewed ways of men do not admit of; and they will\nrepine and tease the life out of those in authority.  Sometimes both\nsuperiors and inferiors, governors and governed, have this fault.  This\nmust often happen in a family, and is a fearful punishment to the elders\nof it.  Scarcely any goodness of disposition, and what are called great\nqualities, can make such difficult materials work well together.\n\nBut I end with somewhat of the same argument as I began with, namely,\nthat as a man lives more with himself than with art, science, or even\nwith his fellows, a wise teacher, having before him the intent to make a\nhappy-minded man of his pupil, will try to lay a groundwork of divine\ncontentment in him.  If he cannot make him easily pleased, he will at\nleast try and prevent him from being easily disconcerted.  Why, even the\nself-conceit that makes people indifferent to small things, wrapping them\nin an atmosphere of self-satisfaction, is welcome in a man compared to\nthat querulousness which makes him an enemy to all around.  But most\ncommendable is that easiness of mind which is easy because it is\ntolerant, because it does not look to have everything its own way,\nbecause it expects anything but smooth usage in its course here, because\nit has resolved to manufacture as few miseries out of small evils as can\nbe.\n\nMost of us know what it is to vex our minds because we cannot recall some\nname or trivial thing which has escaped our memory for the moment.  But\nthen we think how foolish this is, what little concern it is to us.  We\nare right in that; yet any defect of memory is a great concern compared\nto many of the trifling niceties, comforts, offences, and\nrectangularities which, perhaps, we do not think it an ignoble use of\nheart and time to waste ourselves upon.  It would be well enough to\nentertain the rabble of small troubles and offences, if we could lay them\naside with the delightful facility of children, who, after an agony of\ntears, are soon found laughing or asleep.  But the chagrin and vexation\nof grown-up people are grown-up too; and, however childish in their\norigin, are not to be laughed or danced or slept away in childlike\nsimple-heartedness.\n\nWe must not imagine that too much stress can well be laid upon the\nimportance of an education to contentment, for it comes under the head of\nthose things which are not adjuncts or acquisitions for a man, but which\nform the texture of his being.  What a man has learnt is of importance;\nbut what he is, what he can do, what he will become, are more significant\nthings.  Finally, it may be remarked, that, to make education a great\nwork, we must have the educators great; that book-learning is mainly good\nas it gives us a chance of coming into the company of greater and better\nminds than the average of men around us; and that individual greatness\nand goodness are the things to be aimed at rather than the successful\ncultivation of those talents which go to form some eminent membership of\nsociety.  Each man is a drama in himself\u2014has to play all the parts in it;\nis to be king and rebel, successful and vanquished, free and slave; and\nneeds a bringing-up fit for the universal creature that he is.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You have been unexpectedly merciful to us.  The moment I\nheard the head of the essay given out, there flitted before my frightened\nmind volumes of reports, Battersea schools, Bell, Wilderspin, normal\nfarms, National Society, British Schools, interminable questions about\nhow religion might be separated altogether from secular education, or so\nmuch religion taught as all religious sects could agree in.  These are\nall very good things and people to discuss, I daresay; but, to tell the\ntruth, the whole subject sits heavy on my soul.  I meet a man of\ninexhaustible dulness, and he talks to me for three hours about some\ngreat subject\u2014this very one of education, for instance\u2014till I sit\nentranced by stupidity, thinking the while, \u201cAnd this is what we are to\nbecome by education\u2014to be like you.\u201d  Then I see a man like D\u2014, a\njudicious, reasonable, conversable being, knowing how to be silent too\u2014a\nman to go through a campaign with\u2014and I find he cannot read or write.\n\n_Milverton_.  This sort of contrast is just the thing to strike you,\nEllesmere: and yet you know as well as any of us that to bring forward\nsuch contrasts by way of depreciating education would be most\nunreasonable.  There are three things that go to make a man\u2014the education\nthat most people mean by education; then the education that goes deeper,\nthe education of the soul; and, thirdly, a man\u2019s gifts of Nature.  I\nagree with all you say about D\u2014; he never says a foolish thing, and does\na great many judicious ones.  But look what a clever face he has.  There\nare gifts of Nature for you.  Then, again, although he cannot read or\nwrite, he may have been most judiciously brought up in other respects.\nHe may have had two, therefore, out of the three elements of education.\nWhat such instances would show, I believe, if narrowly looked into, is\nthe immense importance of the education of heart and temper.\n\nI feel with you in some measure about the dulness of the subject of\neducation.  But then it extends to all things of the institution kind.\nMen must have a great deal of pedantry, routine, and folly of all sorts,\nin any large matter they undertake.  I had had this feeling for a long\ntime (you know the way in which you have a thing in your mind, although\nyou have never said it out exactly even to yourself)\u2014well, I came upon a\npassage of Emerson\u2019s which I will try to quote, and then I knew what it\nwas that I had felt.\n\n\u201cWe are full of mechanical actions.  We must needs intermeddle, and have\nthings in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are\nodious.  Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy.  Our\nSunday-schools, and churches, and pauper societies, are yokes to the\nneck.  We pain ourselves to please nobody.  There are natural ways of\narriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive.  Why\nshould all virtue work in one and the same way?\u201d . . . \u201cAnd why drag this\ndead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole of Christendom?  It is\nnatural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should\nteach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked.  Do\nnot shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the\nchildren to ask them questions for an hour against their will.\u201d\n\nNow, without agreeing with him in all points, we may sympathise with him.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I agree with him.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I knew you would.  You love an extreme.\n\n_Milverton_.  But look now.  It is well to say, \u201cIt is natural and\nbeautiful that the young should ask and the old should teach\u201d; but then\nthe old should be capable of teaching, which is not the case we have to\ndeal with.  Institutions are often only to meet individual failings.  Let\nthere be more instructed elders, and the \u201cdead weight\u201d of Sunday-schools\nwould be less needed.\n\nI think the result of our thoughts would be, that there should be as much\nlife, joy, and Nature put into teaching as can be; but I, for one, am not\nprepared to say that the most mechanical process is not better than none.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, you have now shut up the subject, according to your\nfashion, in a rounded sentence; and you think after that there is nothing\nmore to be said.  But I say it goes to my heart\u2014\n\n_Dunsford_.  What is that?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  To my heart to see the unmerciful quantity of instruction\nthat little children go through on a Sunday.  I suppose I am a very\nwicked man; but I know how wearied I should have been, at any time of my\nlife, if so much virtuous precept and good doctrine had been poured into\nme.\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, I will not fight certainly for anything that is to\nmake Sunday a wearisome day for children.  Indeed, what I meant by\nputting more joy and life into teaching was, that in such a thing as this\nSunday-schooling, for instance, a judicious man, far from being anxious\nto get a certain quantity of routine done about it, would do with the\nleast\u2014would endeavour to connect it with something interesting\u2014would, in\na word, love children, and not Sunday-schools.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Ah, we will have no more about Sunday-schools.  I know we\nall agree in reality, although Dunsford has been looking very grave and\nhas not said a word.  I wanted to tell you that I think you are quite\nright, Milverton, in saying a good deal about multifariousness of\npursuit.  You see a wretch of a pedant who knows all about tetrameters or\nstatutes of uses, but who, as you hinted an essay or two ago, can hardly\nanswer his child a question as they walk about the garden together.  The\nman has never given a good thought or look to Nature.  Well then, again,\nwhat a stupid thing it is that we are not all taught music.  Why learn\nthe language of many portions of mankind, and leave the universal\nlanguage of the feelings, as you would call it, unlearnt?\n\n_Milverton_.  I quite agree with you; but I thought you always set your\nface, or rather your ears, against music.\n\n_Dunsford_.  So did I.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I should like to know all about it.  It is not to my mind\nthat a cultivated man should be quite thrown out by any topic of\nconversation, or that there should be any form of human endeavour or\naccomplishment which he has no conception of.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I liked what you said, Milverton, about the philosophy of\nmaking light of many things, and the way of looking at life that may thus\nbe given to those we educate.  I rather doubted at first, though, whether\nyou were not going to assign too much power to education in the\nmodification of temper.  But, certainly, the mode of looking at the daily\nevents of life, little or great, and the consequent habits of\ncaptiousness or magnanimity, are just the matters which the young\nespecially imitate their elders in.\n\n_Milverton_.  You see, the very worst kind of tempers are established\nupon the fretting care for trifles that I want to make war upon in the\nessay.  A man is choleric.  Well, it is a very bad thing; it tends to\nfrighten those about him into falseness.  He has outrageous bursts of\ntemper.  He is humble for days afterwards.  His dependants rather like\nhim after all.  They know that \u201chis bark is worse than his bite.\u201d  Then\nthere is your gloomy man, often a man who punishes himself most\u2014perhaps a\nlarge-hearted, humorous, but sad man, at the same time liveable with.  He\ndoes not care for trifles.  But it is your acid-sensitive (I must join\nwords like Mirabeau\u2019s Grandison-Cromwell, to get what I mean), and your\ncold, querulous people that need to have angels to live with them.  Now\neducation has often had a great deal to do with the making of these\nchoice tempers.  They are somewhat artificial productions.  And they are\nthe worst.\n\n_Dunsford_.  You know a saying attributed to the Bishop of \u2014 about\ntemper.  No?  Somebody, I suppose, was excusing something on the score of\ntemper, to which the Bishop replied, \u201cTemper is nine-tenths of\nChristianity.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  There is an appearance we see in Nature, not far from here,\nby the way, that has often put me in mind of the effect of temper upon\nmen.  It is in the lowlands near the sea, where, when the tide is not up\n(the man out of temper), there is a slimy, patchy, diseased-looking\nsurface of mud and sick seaweed.  You pass by in a few hours, there is a\nbeautiful lake, water up to the green grass (the man in temper again),\nand the whole landscape brilliant with reflected light.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  And to complete the likeness, the good temper and the full\ntide last about the same time\u2014with some men at least.  It is so like you,\nMilverton, to have that simile in your mind.  There is nothing you see in\nNature, but you must instantly find a parallel for it in man.  Sermons in\nstones you will not see, else I am sure you might.  Here is a good hard\nflint for you to see your next essay in.\n\n_Milverton_.  It will do very well, as my next will be on the subject of\npopulation.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  What day are we to have it?  I think I have a particular\nengagement for that day.\n\n_Milverton_.  I must come upon you unawares.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  After the essay you certainly might.  Let us decamp now and\ndo something great in the way of education\u2014teach Rollo, though he is but\na short-haired dog, to go into the water.  That will be a feat.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\n\nELLESMERE succeeded in persuading Rollo to go into the water, which\nproved more, he said, than the whole of Milverton\u2019s essay, how much might\nbe done by judicious education.  Before leaving my friends, I promised to\ncome over again to Worth-Ashton in a day or two, to hear another essay.\nI came early and found them reading their letters.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n\u201cYou remember Annesleigh at college,\u201d said Milverton, \u201cdo you not,\nDunsford?\u201d\n\n_Dunsford_.  Yes.\n\n_Milverton_.  Here is a long letter from him.  He is evidently vexed at\nthe newspaper articles about his conduct in a matter of \u2014, and he writes\nto tell me that he is totally misrepresented.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Why does he not explain this publicly?\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes, you naturally think so at first, but such a mode of\nproceeding would never do for a man in office, and rarely, perhaps, for\nany man.  At least, so the most judicious people seem to think.  I have\nknown a man in office bear patiently, without attempting any answer, a\nserious charge which a few lines would have entirely answered, indeed,\nturned the other way.  But then he thought, I imagine, that if you once\nbegin answering, there is no end to it, and also, which is more\nimportant, that the public journals were not a tribunal which he was\ncalled to appear before.  He had his official superiors.\n\n_Dunsford_.  It should be widely known and acknowledged then, that\nsilence does not give consent in these cases.\n\n_Milverton_.  It is known, though not, perhaps, sufficiently.\n\n_Dunsford_.  What a fearful power this anonymous journalism is!\n\n_Milverton_.  There is a great deal certainly that is mischievous in it;\nbut take it altogether, it is a wonderful product of civilisation\u2014morally\ntoo.  Even as regards those qualities which would in general, to use a\nphrase of Bacon\u2019s, \u201cbe noted as deficients\u201d in the press, in courtesy and\nforbearance, for example, it makes a much better figure than might have\nbeen expected; as any one would testify, I suspect, who had observed, or\nhimself experienced, the temptations incident to writing on short notice,\nwithout much opportunity of after-thought or correction, upon subjects\nabout which he had already expressed an opinion.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Is the anonymousness absolutely necessary?\n\n_Milverton_.  I have often thought whether it is.  If the anonymousness\nwere taken away, the press would lose much of its power; but then, why\nshould it not lose a portion of its power, if that portion is only built\nupon some delusion?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  It is a question of expediency.  As government of all kinds\nbecomes better managed, there is less necessity for protection for the\npress.  It must be recollected, however, that this anonymousness (to coin\na word) may not only be useful to protect us from any abuse of power, but\nthat at least it takes away that temptation to discuss things in an\ninsufficient manner which arises from personal fear of giving offence.\nThen, again, there is an advantage in considering arguments without\nreference to persons.  If well-known authors wrote for the press and gave\ntheir signatures, we should often pass by the arguments unfairly, saying,\n\u201cOh, it is only so-and-so: that is the way he always looks at things,\u201d\nwithout seeing whether it is the right way for the occasion in question.\n\n_Milverton_.  But take the other side, Ellesmere.  What national dislikes\nare fostered by newspaper articles, and\u2014\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Articles in reviews and by books.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes, but somehow or other, people imagine that newspapers\nspeak the opinion of a much greater number of people\u2014\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Do not let us talk any more about it.  We may become wise\nenough and well-managed enough to do without this anonymousness: we may\nnot.  How it would astound an ardent Whig or Radical of the last\ngeneration if we could hear such a sentiment as this\u2014as a toast we will\nsay\u2014\u201cThe Press: and may we become so civilised as to be able to take away\nsome of its liberty.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  It may be put another way: \u201cMay it become so civilised that\nwe shall not want to take away any of its liberty.\u201d  But I see you are\ntired of this subject.  Shall we go on the lawn and have our essay?\n\nWe assented, and Milverton read the following:\u2014\n\n\n\nUNREASONABLE CLAIMS IN SOCIAL AFFECTIONS AND RELATIONS.\n\n\nWe are all apt to magnify the importance of whatever we are thinking\nabout, which is not to be wondered at; for everything human has an outlet\ninto infinity, which we come to perceive on considering it.  But with a\nknowledge of this tendency, I still venture to say that, of all that\nconcerns mankind, this subject has, perhaps, been the least treated of in\nregard to its significance.  For once that unreasonable expectations of\ngratitude have been reproved, ingratitude has been denounced a thousand\ntimes; and the same may be said of inconstancy, unkindness in friendship,\nneglected merit and the like.\n\nTo begin with ingratitude.  Human beings seldom have the demands upon\neach other which they imagine; and for what they have done they\nfrequently ask an impossible return.  Moreover, when people really have\ndone others a service, the persons benefited often do not understand it.\nCould they have understood it, the benefactor, perhaps, would not have\nhad to perform it.  You cannot expect gratitude from them in proportion\nto your enlightenment.  Then, again, where the service is a palpable one,\nthoroughly understood, we often require that the gratitude for it should\nbear down all the rest of the man\u2019s character.  The dog is the very\nemblem of faithfulness; yet I believe it is found that he will sometimes\nlike the person who takes him out and amuses him more than the person who\nfeeds him.  So, amongst bipeds, the most solid service must sometimes\ngive way to the claims of congeniality.  Human creatures are, happily,\nnot to be swayed by self-interest alone: they are many-sided creatures;\nthere are numberless modes of attaching their affections.  Not only like\nlikes like, but unlike likes unlike.\n\nTo give an instance which must often occur.  Two persons, both of feeble\nwill, act together: one as superior, the other as inferior.  The superior\nis very kind; the inferior is grateful.  Circumstances occur to break\nthis relation.  The inferior comes under a superior of strong will, who\nis not, however, as tolerant and patient as his predecessor.  But this\nsecond superior soon acquires unbounded influence over the inferior: if\nthe first one looks on, he may wonder at the alacrity and affection of\nhis former subordinate towards the new man, and talk much about\ningratitude.  But the inferior has now found somebody to lean upon and to\nreverence.  And he cannot deny his nature and be otherwise than he is.\nIn this case it does not look like ingratitude, except perhaps to the\ncomplaining person.  But there are doubtless numerous instances in which,\nif we saw all the facts clearly, we should no more confirm the charge of\ningratitude than we do here.\n\nThen, again, we seldom make sufficient allowance for the burden which\nthere is in obligation, at least to all but great and good minds.  There\nare some people who can receive as heartily as they would give; but the\nobligation of an ordinary person to an ordinary person is more apt to be\nbrought to mind as a present sore than as a past delight.\n\nAmongst the unreasonable views of the affections, the most absurd one has\nbeen the fancy that love entirely depends upon the will; still more that\nthe love of others for us is to be guided by the inducements which seem\nprobable to us.  We have served them; we think only of them; we are their\nlovers, or fathers, or brothers: we deserve and require to be loved and\nto have the love proved to us.  But love is not like property: it has\nneither duties nor rights.  You argue for it in vain; and there is no one\nwho can give it you.  It is not his or hers to give.  Millions of bribes\nand infinite arguments cannot prevail.  For it is not a substance, but a\nrelation.  There is no royal road.  We are loved as we are lovable to the\nperson loving.  It is no answer to say that in some cases the love is\nbased on no reality, but is solely in the imagination\u2014that is, that we\nare loved not for what we are, but for what we are fancied to be.  That\nwill not bring it any more into the dominions of logic; and love still\nremains the same untamable creature, deaf to advocacy, blind to other\npeople\u2019s idea of merit, and not a substance to be weighed or numbered at\nall.\n\nThen, as to the complaints about broken friendship.  Friendship is often\noutgrown; and his former child\u2019s clothes will no more fit a man than some\nof his former friendships.  Often a breach of friendship is supposed to\noccur when there is nothing of the kind.  People see one another seldom;\ntheir courses in life are different; they meet, and their intercourse is\nconstrained.  They fancy that their friendship is mightily cooled.  But\nimagine the dearest friends, one coming home after a long sojourn, the\nother going out to new lands: the ships that carry these meet: the\nfriends talk together in a confused way not relevant at all to their\nfriendship, and, if not well assured of their mutual regard, might\nnaturally fancy that it was much abated.  Something like this occurs\ndaily in the stream of the world.  Then, too, unless people are very\nunreasonable, they cannot expect that their friends will pass into new\nsystems of thought and action without new ties of all kinds being\ncreated, and some modification of the old ones taking place.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nWhen we are talking of exorbitant claims made for the regard of others,\nwe must not omit those of what is called neglected merit.  A man feels\nthat he has abilities or talents of a particular kind, that he has shown\nthem, and still he is a neglected man.  I am far from saying that merit\nis sufficiently looked out for: but a man may take the sting out of any\nneglect of his merits by thinking that at least it does not arise from\nmalice prepense, as he almost imagines in his anger.  Neither the public,\nnor individuals, have the time, or will, resolutely to neglect anybody.\nWhat pleases us, we admire and further: if a man in any profession,\ncalling, or art, does things which are beyond us, we are as guiltless of\nneglecting him as the Caffres are of neglecting the differential\ncalculus.  Milton sells his \u201cParadise Lost\u201d for ten pounds; there is no\nrecord of Shakespeare dining much with Queen Elizabeth.  And it is\nUtopian to imagine that statues will be set up to right men in their day.\n\nThe same arguments which applied to the complaints of ingratitude, apply\nto the complaints of neglected merit.  The merit is oftentimes not\nunderstood.  Be it ever so manifest, it cannot absorb men\u2019s attention.\nWhen it is really great, it has not been brought out by the hope of\nreward, any more than the kindest services by the hope of gratitude.  In\nneither case is it becoming or rational to be clamorous about payment.\n\nThere is one thing that people hardly ever remember, or, indeed, have\nimagination enough to conceive; namely, the effect of each man being shut\nup in his individuality.  Take a long course of sayings and doings in\nwhich many persons have been engaged.  Each one of them is in his own\nmind the centre of the web, though, perhaps, he is at the edge of it.  We\nknow that in our observations of the things of sense, any difference in\nthe points from which the observation is taken gives a different view of\nthe same thing.  Moreover, in the world of sense, the objects and the\npoints of view are each indifferent to the rest; but in life the points\nof views are centres of action that have had something to do with the\nmaking of the things looked at.  If we could calculate the moral parallax\narising from these causes, we should see, by the mere aid of the\nintellect, how unjust we often are in our complaints of ingratitude,\ninconstancy, and neglect.  But without these nice calculations, such\nerrors of view may be corrected at once by humility, a more sure method\nthan the most enlightened appreciation of the cause of error.  Humility\nis the true cure for many a needless heartache.\n\nIt must not be supposed that in thus opposing unreasonable views of\nsocial affections, anything is done to dissever such affections.  The\nDuke of Wellington, writing to a man in a dubious position of authority,\nsays \u201cThe less you claim, the more you will have.\u201d  This is remarkably\ntrue of the affections; and there is scarcely anything that would make\nmen happier than teaching them to watch against unreasonableness in their\nclaims of regard and affection; and which at the same time would be more\nlikely to ensure their getting what may be their due.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_ (clapping his hands).  An essay after my heart: worth tons of\nsoft trash.  In general you are amplifying duties, telling everybody that\nthey are to be so good to every other body.  Now it is as well to let\nevery other body know that he is not to expect all he may fancy from\neverybody.  A man complains that his prosperous friends neglect him:\ninfinitely overrating, in all probability, his claims, and his friends\u2019\npower of doing anything for him.  Well, then, you may think me very hard,\nbut I say that the most absurd claims are often put forth on the ground\nof relationship.  I do not deny that there is something in blood, but it\nmust not be made too much of.  Near relations have great opportunities of\nattaching each other; if they fail to use these, I do not think it is\nwell to let them imagine that mere relationship is to be the talisman of\naffection.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I do not see exactly how to answer all that you or Milverton\nhave said; but I am not prepared, as official people say, to agree with\nyou.  I especially disagree with what Milverton has said about love.  He\nleaves much too little power to the will.\n\n_Milverton_.  I daresay I may have done so.  These are very deep matters,\nand any one view about them does not exhaust them.  I remember C\u2014 once\nsaying to me that a man never utters anything without error.  He may even\nthink of it rightly; but he cannot bring it out rightly.  It turns a\nlittle false, as it were, when it quits the brain and comes into life.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I thought you would soon go over to the soft side.  Here,\nRollo; there\u2019s a good dog.  You do not form unreasonable expectations, do\nyou?  A very little petting puts you into an ecstasy, and you are much\nwiser than many a biped who is full of his claims for gratitude, and\nfriendship, and love, and who is always longing for well-merited rewards\nto fall into his mouth.  Down, dog!\n\n_Milverton_.  Poor animal! it little knows that all this sudden notice is\nonly by way of ridiculing us.  Why I did not maintain my ground stoutly\nagainst Dunsford is, that I am always afraid of pushing moral conclusions\ntoo far.  Since we have been talking, I think I see more clearly than I\ndid before what I mean to convey by the essay\u2014namely, that men fall into\nunreasonable views respecting the affections _from imagining that the\ngeneral laws of the mind are suspended for the sake of the affections_.\n\n_Dunsford_.  That seems safer ground.\n\n_Milverton_.  Now to illustrate what I mean by a very similar instance.\nThe mind is avid of new impressions.  It \u201ctravels over,\u201d or thinks it\ntravels over, another mind; and, though it may conceal its wish for\n\u201cfresh fields and pastures new,\u201d it does so wish.  However harsh,\ntherefore, and unromantic it may seem, the best plan is to humour Nature,\nand not to exhaust by overfrequent presence the affection of those whom\nwe would love, or whom we would have to love us.  I would not say, after\nthe manner of Rochefoucauld, that the less we see of people the more we\nlike them; but there are certain limits of sociality; and prudent reserve\nand absence may find a place in the management of the tenderest\nrelations.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Yes, all this is true enough: I do not see anything hard in\nthis.  But then there is the other side.  Custom is a great aid to\naffection.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes.  All I say is, do not fancy that the general laws are\nsuspended for the sake of any one affection.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Still this does not go to the question whether there is not\nsomething more of will in affection than you make out.  You would speak\nof inducements and counter-inducements, aids and hindrances; but I cannot\nbut think you are limiting the power of will, and therefore limiting\nduty.  Such views tend to make people easily discontented with each\nother, and prevent their making efforts to get over offences, and to find\nout what is lovable in those about them.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Here we are in the deep places again.  I see you are\npondering, Milverton.  It is a question, as a minister would say when\nParliament perplexes him, that we must go to the country upon; each man\u2019s\nheart will, perhaps, tell him best about it.  For my own part, I think\nthat the continuance of affection, as the rise of it, depends more on the\ntaste being satisfied, or at least not disgusted, than upon any other\nsingle thing.  Our hearts may be touched at our being loved by people\nessentially distasteful to us, whose modes of talking and acting are a\ncontinual offence to us; but whether we can love them in return is a\nquestion.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes, we can, I think.  I begin to see that it is a question\nof degree.  The word love includes many shades of meaning.  When it\nincludes admiration, of course we cannot be said to love those in whom we\nsee nothing to admire.  But this seldom happens in the mixed characters\nof real life.  The upshot of it all seems to me to be, that, as Guizot\nsays of civilisation, every impulse has room; so in the affections, every\ninducement and counter-inducement has its influence; and the result is\nnot a simple one, which can be spoken of as if it were alike on all\noccasions and with all men.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I am still unanswered, I think, Milverton.  What you say is\nstill wholly built upon inducements, and does not touch the power of\nwill.\n\n_Milverton_.  No; it does not.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  We must leave that alone.  Infinite piles of books have not\nas yet lifted us up to a clear view of that matter.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, then, we must leave it as a vexed question; but let it\nbe seen that there is such a question.  Now, as to another thing; you\nspeak, Milverton, of men\u2019s not making allowance enough for the unpleasant\nweight of obligation.  I think that weight seems to have increased in\nmodern times.  Essex could give Bacon a small estate, and Bacon could\ntake it comfortably, I have no doubt.  That is a much more wholesome\nstate of things among friends than the present.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes, undoubtedly.  An extreme notion about independence has\nmade men much less generous in receiving.\n\n_Dunsford_.  It is a falling off, then.  There was another comment I had\nto make.  I think, when you speak about the exorbitant demands of\nneglected merit, you should say more upon the neglect of the just demands\nof merit.\n\n_Milverton_.  I would have the Government and the public in general try\nby all means to understand and reward merit, especially in those matters\nwherein excellence cannot, otherwise, meet with large present reward.\nBut, to say the truth, I would have this done, not with the view of\nfostering genius so much as of fulfilling duty: I would say to a\nminister\u2014it is becoming in you\u2014it is well for the nation, to reward, as\nfar as you can, and dignify, men of genius.  Whether you will do them any\ngood or bring forth more of them, I do not know.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Men of great genius are often such a sensitive race, so apt\nto be miserable in many other than pecuniary ways and want of public\nestimation, that I am not sure that distress and neglect do not take\ntheir minds off worse discomforts.  It is a kind of grievance, too, that\nthey like to have.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Really, Ellesmere, that is a most unfeeling speech.\n\n_Milverton_.  At any rate, it is right for us to honour and serve a great\nman.  It is our nature to do so, if we are worth anything.  We may put\naside the question whether our honour will do him more good than our\nneglect.  That is a question for him to look to.  The world has not yet\nso largely honoured deserving men in their own time, that we can exactly\npronounce what effect it would have upon them.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Come, Rollo, let us leave these men of sentiment.  Oh, you\nwill not go, as your master does not move.  Look how he wags his tail,\nand almost says, \u201cI should clearly like to have a hunt after the\nwater-rat we saw in the pond the other day, but master is talking\nphilosophy, and requires an intelligent audience.\u201d  These dogs are dear\ncreatures, it must be owned.  Come, Milverton, let us have a walk.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\n\nAFTER the reading in the last chapter, my friends walked homewards with\nme as far as Durley Wood, which is about half-way between Worth-Ashton\nand my house.  As we rested here, we bethought ourselves that it would be\na pleasant spot for us to come to sometimes and read our essays.  So we\nagreed to name a day for meeting there.  The day was favourable, we met\nas we had appointed, and finding some beech logs lying very opportunely,\ntook possession of them for our council.  We seated Ellesmere on one that\nwe called the woolsack, but which he said he felt himself unworthy to\noccupy in the presence of King Log, pointing to mine.  These nice points\nof etiquette being at last settled, Milverton drew out his papers and was\nabout to begin reading, when Ellesmere thus interrupted him:\u2014\n\n_Ellesmere_.  You were not in earnest, Milverton, about giving us an\nessay on population?  Because if so, I think I shall leave this place to\nyou and Dunsford and the ants.\n\n_Milverton_.  I certainly have been meditating something of the sort; but\nhave not been able to make much of it.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  If I had been living in those days when it first beamed\nupon mankind that the earth was round, I am sure I should have said, \u201cWe\nknow now the bounds of the earth: there are no interminable plains joined\nto the regions of the sun, allowing of indefinite sketchy outlines at the\nedges of maps.  That little creature man will immediately begin to think\nthat his world is too small for him.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  There has probably been as much folly uttered by political\neconomy as against it, which is saying something.  The danger as regards\ntheories of political economy is the obvious one of their abstract\nconclusions being applied to concrete things.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  As if we were to expect mathematical lines to bear weights.\n\n_Milverton_.  Something like that.  With a good system of logic pervading\nthe public mind, this danger would of course be avoided; but such a state\nof mind is not likely to occur in any public that we or our grandchildren\nare likely to have to deal with.  As it is, an ordinary man hears some\nconclusion of political economy, showing some particular tendency of\nthings, which in real life meets with many counteractions of all kinds:\nbut he, perhaps, adopts the conclusion without the least abatement, and\nwould work it into life, as if all went on there like a rule-of-three\nsum.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  After all, this error arises from the man\u2019s not having\nenough political economy.  It is not that a theory is good on paper, but\nunsound in real life.  It is only that in real life you cannot get at the\nsimple state of things to which the theory would rightly apply.  You want\nmany other theories and the just composition of them all to be able to\nwork the whole problem.  That being done (which, however, scarcely can be\ndone), the result on paper might be read off as applicable at once to\nlife.  But now, touching the essay; since we are not to have population,\nwhat is it to be?\n\n_Milverton_.  Public improvements.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Nearly as bad; but as this is a favourite subject of yours,\nI suppose it will not be polite to go away.\n\n_Milverton_.  No; you must listen.\n\n\n\nPUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.\n\n\nWhat are possessions?  To an individual, the stores of his own heart and\nmind pre-eminently.  His truth and valour are amongst the first.  His\ncontentedness, or his resignation may be put next.  Then his sense of\nbeauty, surely a possession of great moment to him.  Then all those mixed\npossessions which result from the social affections\u2014great possessions,\nunspeakable delights, much greater than the gift last mentioned in the\nformer class, but held on more uncertain tenure.  Lastly, what are\ngenerally called possessions?  However often we have heard of the vanity,\nuncertainty, and vexation that beset these last, we must not let this\nrepetition deaden our minds to the fact.\n\nNow, national possessions must be estimated by the same gradation that we\nhave applied to individual possessions.  If we consider national luxury,\nwe shall see how small a part it may add to national happiness.  Men of\ndeserved renown, and peerless women, lived upon what we should now call\nthe coarsest fare, and paced the rushes in their rooms with as high, or\nas contented thoughts, as their better-fed and better-clothed descendants\ncan boast of.  Man is limited in this direction; I mean, in the things\nthat concern his personal gratification; but when you come to the higher\nenjoyments, the expansive power both in him and them is greater.  As\nKeats says,\n\n    \u201cA thing of beauty is a joy for ever;\n    Its loveliness increases; it will never\n    Pass into nothingness; but still will keep\n    A bower quiet for us, and a sleep\n    Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.\u201d\n\nWhat then are a nation\u2019s possessions?  The great words that have been\nsaid in it; the great deeds that have been done in it; the great\nbuildings, and the great works of art, that have been made in it.  A man\nsays a noble saying: it is a possession, first to his own race, then to\nmankind.  A people get a noble building built for them: it is an honour\nto them, also a daily delight and instruction.  It perishes.  The\nremembrance of it is still a possession.  If it was indeed pre-eminent,\nthere will be more pleasure in thinking of it than in being with others\nof inferior order and design.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nOn the other hand, a thing of ugliness is potent for evil.  It deforms\nthe taste of the thoughtless: it frets the man who knows how bad it is:\nit is a disgrace to the nation who raised it; an example and an occasion\nfor more monstrosities.  If it is a great building in a great city,\nthousands of people pass it daily, and are the worse for it, or at least\nnot the better.  It must be done away with.  Next to the folly of doing a\nbad thing is that of fearing to undo it.  We must not look at what it has\ncost, but at what it is.  Millions may be spent upon some foolish device\nwhich will not the more make it into a possession, but only a more\nnoticeable detriment.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nIt must not be supposed that works of art are the only, or the chief,\npublic improvements needed in any country.  Wherever men congregate, the\nelements become scarce.  The supply of air, light, and water is then a\nmatter of the highest public importance: and the magnificent\nutilitarianism of the Romans should precede the nice sense of beauty of\nthe Greeks.  Or rather, the former should be worked out in the latter.\nSanitary improvements, like most good works, may be made to fulfil many\nof the best human objects.  Charity, social order, conveniency of living,\nand the love of the beautiful, may all be furthered by such improvements.\nA people is seldom so well employed as when, not suffering their\nattention to be absorbed by foreign quarrels and domestic broils, they\nbethink themselves of winning back those blessings of Nature which\nassemblages of men mostly vitiate, exclude, or destroy.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nPublic improvements are sometimes most difficult in free countries.  The\norigination of them is difficult there, many diverse minds having to be\npersuaded.  The individual, or class, resistance to the public good is\nharder to conquer than in despotic states.  And, what is most\nembarrassing, perhaps, individual progress in the same direction, or\nindividual doings in some other way, form a great hindrance, sometimes,\nto public enterprise.  On the other hand, the energy of a free people is\na mine of public welfare; and individual effort brings many good things\nto bear in much shorter time than any government could be expected to\nmove in.  A judicious statesman considers these things; and sets himself\nespecially to overcome those peculiar obstacles to public improvement\nwhich belong to the institutions of his country.  Adventure in a despotic\nstate, combined action in a free state, are the objects which peculiarly\ndemand his attention.\n\nTo return to works of art.  In this also the genius of the people is to\nbe heeded.  There may have been, there may be, nations requiring to be\ndiverted from the love of art to stern labour and industrial conquests.\nBut certainly it is not so with the Anglo-Saxon race, or with the\nNorthern races generally.  Money may enslave them; logic may enslave\nthem; art never will.  The chief men, therefore, in these races will do\nwell sometimes to contend against the popular current, and to convince\ntheir people that there are other sources of delight, and other objects\nworthy of human endeavour, than severe money-getting or more material\nsuccesses of any kind.\n\nIn fine, the substantial improvement, and even the embellishment of\ntowns, is a work which both the central and local governing bodies in a\ncountry should keep a steady hand upon.  It especially concerns them.\nWhat are they there for but to do that which individuals cannot do?  It\nconcerns them, too, as it tells upon the health, morals, education, and\nrefined pleasures of the people they govern.  In doing it, they should\navoid pedantry, parsimony, and favouritism; and their mode of action\nshould be large, considerate, and foreseeing.  Large; inasmuch as they\nmust not easily be contented with the second best in any of their\nprojects.  Considerate; inasmuch as they have to think what their people\nneed most, not what will make most show.  And therefore, they should be\ncontented, for instance, at their work going on underground for a time,\nor in byways, if needful; the best charity in public works, as in\nprivate, being often that which courts least notice.  Lastly, their work\nshould be with foresight, recollecting that cities grow up about us like\nyoung people, before we are aware of it.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Another very merciful essay!  When we had once got upon the\nsubject of sanitary improvements, I thought we should soon be five fathom\ndeep in blue-books, reports, interminable questions of sewerage, and\nhorrors of all kinds.\n\n_Milverton_.  I am glad you own that I have been very tender of your\nimpatience in this essay.  People, I trust, are now so fully aware of the\nimmense importance of sanitary improvements, that we do not want the\nelementary talking about such things that was formerly necessary.  It is\ndifficult, though, to say too much about sanitary matters, that is, if by\nsaying much one could gain attention.  I am convinced that the most\nfruitful source of physical evil to mankind has been impure air, arising\nfrom circumstances which might have been obviated.  Plagues and\npestilences of all kinds, cretinism too, and all scrofulous disorders,\nare probably mere questions of ventilation.  A district may require\nventilation as well as a house.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Seriously speaking, I quite agree with you.  And what\ndelights me in sanitary improvements is, that they can hardly do harm.\nGive a poor man good air, and you do not diminish his self-reliance.  You\nonly add to his health and vigour\u2014make more of a man of him.  But now\nthat the public mind, as it is facetiously called, has got hold of the\nidea of these improvements, everybody will be chattering about them.\n\n_Milverton_.  The very time when those who really do care for these\nmatters should be watchful to make the most of the tide in their favour,\nand should not suffer themselves to relax their efforts because there is\nno originality now about such things.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Custom soon melts off the wings which Novelty alone has lent\nto Benevolence.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  And down comes the charitable Icarus.  A very good simile,\nmy dear Dunsford, but rather of the Latin-verse order.  I almost see it\nworked into an hexameter and pentameter, and delighting the heart of an\nEton boy.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Ellesmere is more than usually vicious to-day, Milverton.  A\ngreat \u201cpublic improvement\u201d would be to clip the tongues of some of these\nlawyers.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Possibly.  I have just been looking again at that part of\nthe essay, Milverton, where you talk of the little gained by national\nluxury.  I think with you.  There is an immensity of nonsense uttered\nabout making people happy, which is to be done, according to\nhappiness-mongers, by quantities of sugar and tea, and such-like things.\nOne knows the importance of food, but there is no Elysium to be got out\nof it.\n\n_Milverton_.  I know what you mean.  There is a kind of pity for the\npeople now in vogue which is most effeminate.  It is a sugared sort of\nRobespierre talk about \u201cThe poor but virtuous People.\u201d  To address such\nstuff to the people is not to give them anything, but to take away what\nthey have.  Suppose you could give them oceans of tea and mountains of\nsugar, and abundance of any luxury that you choose to imagine, but at the\nsame time you inserted a hungry, envious spirit in them, what have you\ndone?  Then, again, this envious spirit, when it is turned to difference\nof station, what good can it do?  Can you give station according to\nmerit?  Is life long enough for it?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Of course we cannot always be weighing men with nicety, and\nsaying, \u201cHere is your place, here yours.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  Then, again, what happiness do you confer on men by\nteaching them to disrespect their superiors in rank, by turning all the\nembellishments which adorn various stations wrong side out, putting\neverything in its lowest form, and then saying, \u201cWhat do you see to\nadmire here?\u201d  You do not know what injury you may do a man when you\ndestroy all reverence in him.  It will be found out some day that men\nderive more pleasure and profit from having superiors than from having\ninferiors.\n\n_Dunsford_.  It is seldom that I bring you back to your subject, but we\nare really a long way off at present; and I want to know, Milverton, what\nyou would do specifically in the way of public improvements.  Of course\nyou cannot say in an essay what you would do in such matters, but amongst\nourselves.  In London, for instance.\n\n_Milverton_.  The first thing for Government to do, Dunsford, in London,\nor any other great town, is to secure open spaces in it and about it.\nTrafalgar Square may be dotted with hideous absurdities, but it is an\nopen space.  They may collect together there specimens of every variety\nof meanness and bad taste; but they cannot prevent its being a better\nthing than if it were covered with houses.  Public money is scarcely ever\nso well employed as in securing bits of waste ground and keeping them as\nopen spaces.  Then, as under the most favourable circumstances, we are\nlikely to have too much carbon in the air of any town, we should plant\ntrees to restore the just proportions of the air as far as we can. {161}\nTrees are also what the heart and the eye desire most in towns.  The\nBoulevards in Paris show the excellent effect of trees against buildings.\nThere are many parts of London where rows of trees might be planted along\nthe streets.  The weighty dulness of Portland Place, for instance, might\nbe thus relieved.  Of course, in any scheme of public improvements, the\ngetting rid of smoke is one of the first objects.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes, smoke is a great abuse; but then there is something\nludicrous about it, just as there is about sewerage.  I believe, myself,\nthat for one person that the Corn Laws have injured, a dozen have had\ntheir lives shortened and their happiness abridged in every way by these\nless palpable nuisances.  But there is no grandeur in opposing them\u2014no\n\u201cgood cry\u201d to be raised.  And so, as abuses cannot be met in our days but\nby agitation\u2014a committee, secretaries, clerks, newspapers, and a\nreview\u2014and as agitation in this case holds out fewer inducements than\nusual, we have gone on year after year being poisoned by these various\nnuisances, at an incalculable expense of life and money.\n\n_Milverton_.  There is something in what you say, I think, but you press\nit too far; for of late these sanitary subjects have worked themselves\ninto notice, as you yourself admit.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Late indeed.\n\n_Milverton_.  Well, but to go on with schemes for improving London.  Open\nspaces, trees\u2014then comes the supply of water.  This is one of the first\nthings to be done.  Philadelphia has given an example which all towns\nought to imitate.  It is a matter requiring great thought, and the\nvarious plans should be thoroughly canvassed before the choice is made.\nGreat beauty and the highest utility may be combined in supplying a town\nlike London with water.  By the way, how much water do you think London\nrequires daily?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  As much as the Serpentine and the water in St. James\u2019s\nPark.\n\n_Milverton_.  You are not so far out.\n\nWell, then, having gone through the largest things that must be attended\nto, we come to minor matters.  It is a great pity that the system of\nbuilding upon leases should be so commonly adopted.  Nobody expects to\nlive out the leasehold term which he takes to build upon.  But things\nwould be better done if people were more averse to having anything to do\nwith leasehold property.  C. always says that the modern lath-and-plaster\nsystem is a wickedness, and upon my word I think he is right.  It is\ninconceivable to me how a man can make up his mind to build, or to do\nanything else, in a temporary, slight, insincere fashion.  What has a man\nto say for himself who must sum up the doings of his life in this way, \u201cI\nchiefly employed myself in making or selling things which seemed to be\ngood and were not, and nobody has occasion to bless me for anything I\nhave done.\u201d\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Humph! you put it mildly.  But the man has made perhaps\nseven per cent. off his money; or, if he has made no per cent., has\nruined several men of his own trade, which is not to go for nothing when\na man is taking stock of his good deeds.\n\n_Milverton_.  There is one thing I forgot to say, that we want more\nindividual will in building, I think.  As it is at present, a great\nbuilder takes a plot of ground and turns out innumerable houses, all\nalike, the same faults and merits running through each, thus adding to\nthe general dulness of things.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when she came from abroad,\nremarked that all her friends seemed to have got into drawing-rooms which\nwere like a grand piano, first a large square or oblong room, and then a\nsmall one.  Quite Georgian, this style of architecture.  But now I think\nwe are improving immensely\u2014at any rate in the outside of houses.  By the\nway, Milverton, I want to ask you one thing: How is it that Governments\nand Committees, and the bodies that manage matters of taste, seem to be\nmore tasteless than the average run of people?  I will wager anything\nthat the cabmen round Trafalgar Square would have made a better thing of\nit than it is.  If you had put before them several prints of fountains,\nthey would not have chosen those.\n\n_Milverton_.  I think with you, but I have no theory to account for it.\nI suppose that these committees are frequently hampered by other\nconsiderations than those which come before the public when they are\nlooking at the work done; and this may be some excuse.  There was a\ncustom which I have heard prevailed in former days in some of the Italian\ncities, of making large models of the works of art that were to adorn the\ncity, and putting them up in the places intended for the works when\nfinished, and then inviting criticism.  It would really be a very good\nplan in some cases.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Now, Milverton, would you not forthwith pull down such\nthings as Buckingham Palace and the National Gallery?  Dunsford looks at\nme as if I were going to pull down the Constitution.\n\n_Milverton_.  I would pull them down to a certainty, or some parts of\nthem at any rate; but whether \u201cforthwith\u201d is another question.  There are\ngreater things, perhaps, to be done first.  We must consider, too,\n\n    \u201cThat eternal want of pence\n    Which vexes public men.\u201d\n\nStill, I think we ought always to look upon such buildings as temporary\narrangements, and they vex one less then.  The Palace ought to be in the\nhigher part of the Park, perhaps on that slope opposite Piccadilly.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, it does amuse me the way in which you youngsters go\non, pulling down, in your industrious imaginations, palaces and national\ngalleries, building aqueducts and cloac\u00e6 maxim\u00e6, forming parks,\ndestroying smoke (so large a part of every Londoner\u2019s diet), and\nabridging plaster, without fear of Chancellors of the Exchequer, and the\nresistance of mankind in general.\n\n_Milverton_.  We must begin by thinking boldly about things.  That is a\nlarger part of any undertaking than it seems, perhaps.\n\n_Dunsford_.  We must, I am afraid, break off our pleasant employment of\nprojecting public improvements, unless we mean to be dinnerless.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  A frequent fate of great projectors, I fear.\n\n_Milverton_.  Now then, homewards.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\n\nMY readers will, perhaps, agree with me in being sorry to find that we\nare coming to the end of our present series.  I say, \u201cmy readers,\u201d though\nI have so little part in purveying for them, that I mostly consider\nmyself one of them.  It is no light task, however, to give a good account\nof a conversation; and I say this, and would wish people to try whether I\nam not right in saying so, not to call attention to my labour in the\nmatter, but because it may be well to notice how difficult it is to\nreport anything truly.  Were this better known, it might be an aid to\ncharity, and prevent some of those feuds which grow out of the poverty of\nman\u2019s power to express, to apprehend, to represent, rather than out of\nany malignant part of his nature.  But I must not go on moralising.  I\nalmost feel that Ellesmere is looking over my shoulder, and breaking into\nmy discourse with sharp words; which I have lately been so much\naccustomed to.\n\nI had expected that we should have many more readings this summer, as I\nknew that Milverton had prepared more essays for us.  But finding, as he\nsaid, that the other subjects he had in hand were larger than he had\nanticipated, or was prepared for, he would not read even to us what he\nhad written.  Though I was very sorry for this\u2014for I may not be the\nchronicler in another year\u2014I could not but say he was right.  Indeed, my\nideas of literature, nourished as they have been in much solitude, and by\nthe reading, if I may say so, mainly of our classical authors, are very\nhigh placed, though I hope not fantastical.  And, therefore, I would not\ndiscourage anyone in expending whatever thought and labour might be in\nhim upon any literary work.\n\nIn fine, then, I did not attempt to dissuade Milverton from his purpose\nof postponing our readings: and we agreed that there should only be one\nmore for the present.  I wished it to be at our favourite place on the\nlawn, which had become endeared to me as the spot of many of our friendly\ncouncils.\n\nIt was later than usual when I came over to Worth-Ashton for this\nreading; and as I gained the brow of the hill, some few clouds tinged\nwith red were just grouping together to form the accustomed pomp upon the\nexit of the setting sun.  I believe I mentioned in the introduction to\nour first conversation that the ruins of an old castle could be seen from\nour place of meeting.  Milverton and Ellesmere were talking about it as I\njoined them.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes, Ellesmere, many a man has looked out of those windows\nupon a sunset like this, with some of the thoughts that must come into\nthe minds of all men on seeing this great emblem, the setting sun\u2014has\nfelt, in looking at it, his coming end, or the closing of his greatness.\nThose old walls must have been witness to every kind of human emotion.\nHenry the Second was there; John, I think; Margaret of Anjou and Cardinal\nBeaufort; William of Wykeham; Henry the Eighth\u2019s Cromwell; and many\nothers who have made some stir in the world.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  And, perhaps, the greatest there were those who made no\nstir.\n\n    \u201cThe world knows nothing of its greatest men.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  I am slow to believe that.  I cannot well reconcile myself\nto the idea that great capacities are given for nothing.  They bud out in\nsome way or other.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes, but it may not be in a noisy way.\n\n_Milverton_.  There is one thing that always strikes me very much in\nlooking at the lives of men: how soon, as it were, their course seems to\nbe determined.  They say, or do, or think, something which gives a bias\nat once to the whole of their career.\n\n_Dunsford_.  You may go farther back than that, and speak of the impulses\nthey got from their ancestors.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Or the nets around them of other people\u2019s ways and wishes.\nThere are many things, you see, that go to make men puppets.\n\n_Milverton_.  I was only noticing the circumstance that there was such a\nthing, as it appeared to me, as this early direction.  But, if it has\nbeen ever so unfortunate, a man\u2019s folding his hands over it in a\nmelancholy mood, and suffering himself to be made a puppet by it, is a\nsadly weak proceeding.  Most thoughtful men have probably some dark\nfountains in their souls, by the side of which, if there were time, and\nit were decorous, they could let their thoughts sit down and wail\nindefinitely.  That long Byron wail fascinated men for a time; because\nthere is that in Human Nature.  Luckily, a great deal besides.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I delight in the helpful and hopeful men.\n\n_Milverton_.  A man that I admire very much, and have met with\noccasionally, is one who is always of use in any matter he is mixed up\nwith, simply because he wishes that the best should be got out of the\nthing that is possible.  There does not seem much in the description of\nsuch a character; but only see it in contrast with that of a brilliant\nman, for instance, who does not ever fully care about the matter in hand.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I can thoroughly imagine the difference.\n\n_Milverton_.  The human race may be bound up together in some mysterious\nway, each of us having a profound interest in the fortunes of the whole,\nand so, to some extent, of every portion of it.  Such a man as I have\ndescribed acts as though he had an intuitive perception of that relation,\nand therefore a sort of family feeling for mankind, which gives him\nsatisfaction in making the best out of any human affair he has to do\nwith.\n\nBut we really must have the essay, and not talk any more.  It is on\nHistory.\n\n\n\nHISTORY.\n\n\nAmong the fathomless things that are about us and within us, is the\ncontinuity of time.  This gives to life one of its most solemn aspects.\nWe may think to ourselves: Would there could be some halting-place in\nlife, where we could stay, collecting our minds, and see the world drift\nby us.  But no: even while you read this, you are not pausing to read it.\nAs one of the great French preachers, I think, says, We are embarked upon\na stream, each in his own little boat, which must move uniformly onwards,\ntill it ceases to move at all.  It is a stream that knows \u201cno haste, no\nrest\u201d; a boat that knows no haven but one.\n\nThis unbated continuity suggests the past as well as the future.  We\nwould know what mighty empires this stream of time has flowed through, by\nwhat battle-fields it has been tinged, how it has been employed towards\nfertility, and what beautiful shadows on its surface have been seized by\nart, or science, or great words, and held in time-lasting, if not in\neverlasting, beauty.  This is what history tells us.  Often in a\nfaltering, confused, be-darkened way, like the deed it chronicles.  But\nit is what we have, and we must make the best of it.\n\nThe subject of this essay may be thus divided: Why history should be\nread\u2014how it should be read\u2014by whom it should be written\u2014how it should be\nwritten\u2014and how good writers of history should be called forth, aided,\nand rewarded.\n\n\n\nI.  WHY HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.\n\n\nIt takes us out of too much care for the present; it extends our\nsympathies; it shows us that other men have had their sufferings and\ntheir grievances; it enriches discourse, it enlightens travel.  So does\nfiction.  But the effect of history is more lasting and suggestive.  If\nwe see a place which fiction has treated of, we feel that it has some\ninterest for us; but show us a spot where remarkable deeds have been\ndone, or remarkable people have lived, and our thoughts cling to it.  We\nemploy our own imagination about it: we invent the fiction for ourselves.\nAgain, history is at least the conventional account of things: that which\nmen agree to receive as the right account, and which they discuss as\ntrue.  To understand their talk, we must know what they are talking\nabout.  Again, there is something in history which can seldom be got from\nthe study of the lives of individual men; namely, the movements of men\ncollectively, and for long periods\u2014of man, in fact, not of men.  In\nhistory, the composition of the forces that move the world has to be\nanalysed.  We must have before us the law of the progress of opinion, the\ninterruptions to it of individual character, the principles on which men\nact in the main, the trade winds, as we may say, in human affairs, and\nthe recurrent storms which one man\u2019s life does not tell us of.  Again, by\nthe study of history, we have a chance of becoming tolerant travelling\nover the ways of many nations and many periods; and we may also acquire\nthat historic tact by which we collect upon one point of human affairs\nthe light of many ages.\n\nWe may judge of the benefit of historical studies by observing what great\ndefects are incident to the moral and political writers who know nothing\nof history.  A present grievance, or what seems such, swallows up in\ntheir minds all other considerations; their little bottle of oil is to\nstill the raging waves of the whole human ocean; their system, a thing\nthat the historian has seen before, perhaps, in many ages, is to\nreconcile all diversities.  Then they would persuade you that this class\nof men is wholly good, that wholly bad; or that there is no difference\nbetween good and bad.  They may be shrewd men, considering what they have\nseen, but would be much shrewder if they could know how small a part that\nis of life.  We may all refer to our boyhood, and recollect the time when\nwe thought the things about us were the type of all things everywhere.\nThat was, perhaps, after all no silly princess who was for feeding the\nfamishing people on cakes.  History takes us out of this confined circle\nof child-like thought; and shows us what are the perennial aims,\nstruggles, and distractions of mankind.\n\nHistory has always been set down as the especial study for statesmen, and\nfor men who take an interest in public affairs.  For history is to\nnations what biography is to individual men.  History is the chart and\ncompass for national endeavour.  Our early voyagers are dead: not a plank\nremains of the old ships that first essayed unknown waters; the sea\nretains no track; and were it not for the history of these voyages\ncontained in charts, in chronicles, in hoarded lore of all kinds, each\nvoyager, though he were to start with all the aids of advanced\ncivilisation (if you could imagine such a thing without history), would\nneed the boldness of the first voyager.\n\nAnd so it would be with the statesman, were the civil history of mankind\nunknown.  We live to some extent in peace and comfort upon the results\nobtained for us by the chronicles of our forefathers.  We do not see this\nwithout some reflection.  But imagine what a full-grown nation would be\nif it knew no history\u2014like a full-grown man with only a child\u2019s\nexperience.\n\nThe present is an age of remarkable experiences.  Vast improvements have\nbeen made in several of the outward things that concern life nearly, from\nintercourse rapid as lightning to surgical operation without pain.  We\naccept them all; still, the difficulties of government, the management of\nourselves, our relations with others, and many of the prime difficulties\nof life remain but little subdued.  History still claims our interest, is\nstill wanted to make us think and act with any breadth of wisdom.\n\nAt the same time, however, that we claim for history great powers of\ninstruction, we must not imagine that the examples which it furnishes\nwill enable its readers to anticipate the experience of life.  An\nexperienced man reads that C\u00e6sar did this or that, but he says to\nhimself, \u201cI am not C\u00e6sar.\u201d  Or, indeed, as is most probable, the reader\nhas not to reject the application of the example to himself: for from\nfirst to last he sees nothing but experience for C\u00e6sar in what C\u00e6sar was\ndoing.  I think it may be observed, too, that general maxims about life\ngain the ear of the inexperienced, in preference to historical examples.\nBut neither wise sayings nor historical examples can be understood\nwithout experience.  Words are only symbols.  Who can know anything\nsoundly with respect to the complicated affections and struggles of life,\nunless he has experienced some of them?  All knowledge of humanity\nspreads from within.  So in studying history, the lessons it teaches must\nhave something to grow round in the heart they teach.  Our own trials,\nmisfortunes, and enterprises are the best lights by which we can read\nhistory.  Hence it is that many an historian may see far less into the\ndepths of the very history he has himself written than a man who, having\nacted and suffered, reads the history in question with all the wisdom\nthat comes from action and suffering.  Sir Robert Walpole might naturally\nexclaim, \u201cDo not read history to me, for that, I know, must be false.\u201d\nBut if he had read it, I do not doubt that he would have seen through the\nfilm of false and insufficient narrative into the depth of the matter\nnarrated, in a way that men of great experience can alone attain to.\n\n\n\nII.  HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.\n\n\nI suppose that many who now connect the very word history with the idea\nof dulness, would have been fond and diligent students of history if it\nhad had fair access to their minds.  But they were set down to read\nhistories which were not fitted to be read continuously, or by any but\npractised students.  Some such works are mere framework, a name which the\nauthor of the _Statesman_ applies to them; very good things, perhaps, for\ntheir purpose, but that is not to invite readers to history.  You might\nalmost as well read dictionaries with a hope of getting a succinct and\nclear view of language.  When, in any narration, there is a constant\nheaping up of facts, made about equally significant by the way of telling\nthem, a hasty delineation of characters, and all the incidents moving on\nas in the fifth act of a confused tragedy, the mind and memory refuse to\nbe so treated; and the reading ends in nothing but a very slight and\ninaccurate acquaintance with the mere husk of the history.  You cannot\nepitomise the knowledge that it would take years to acquire into a few\nvolumes that may be read in as many weeks.\n\nThe most likely way of attracting men\u2019s attention to historical subjects\nwill be by presenting them with small portions of history, of great\ninterest, thoroughly examined.  This may give them the habit of applying\nthought and criticism to historical matters.\n\nFor, as it is, how are people interested in history? and how do they\nmaster its multitudinous assemblage of facts?  Mostly, perhaps, in this\nway.  A man cares about some one thing, or person, or event, and plunges\ninto its history, really wishing to master it.  This pursuit extends:\nother points of research are taken up by him at other times.  His\nresearches begin to intersect.  He finds a connection in things.  The\ntexture of his historic acquisitions gradually attains some substance and\ncolour; and so at last he begins to have some dim notions of the myriads\nof men who came, and saw, and did not conquer\u2014only struggled on as they\nbest might, some of them\u2014and are not.\n\nWhen we are considering how history should be read, the main thing\nperhaps is, that the person reading should desire to know what he is\nreading about, not merely to have read the books that tell of it.  The\nmost elaborate and careful historian must omit, or pass lightly over,\nmany points of his subject.  He writes for all readers, and cannot\nindulge private fancies.  But history has its particular aspect for each\nman: there must be portions which he may be expected to dwell upon.  And\neverywhere, even where the history is most laboured, the reader should\nhave something of the spirit of research which was needful for the\nwriter: if only so much as to ponder well the words of the writer.  That\nman reads history, or anything else, at great peril of being thoroughly\nmisled, who has no perception of any truthfulness except that which can\nbe fully ascertained by reference to facts; who does not in the least\nperceive the truth, or the reverse, of a writer\u2019s style, of his epithets,\nof his reasoning, of his mode of narration.  In life, our faith in any\nnarration is much influenced by the personal appearance, voice, and\ngesture of the person narrating.  There is some part of all these things\nin his writing; and you must look into that well before you can know what\nfaith to give him.  One man may make mistakes in names, and dates, and\nreferences, and yet have a real substance of truthfulness in him, a wish\nto enlighten himself and then you.  Another may not be wrong in his\nfacts, but have a declamatory or sophistical vein in him, much to be\nguarded against.  A third may be both inaccurate and untruthful, caring\nnot so much for anything as to write his book.  And if the reader cares\nonly to read it, sad work they make between them of the memories of\nformer days.\n\nIn studying history, it must be borne in mind that a knowledge is\nnecessary of the state of manners, customs, wealth, arts, and science at\nthe different periods treated of.  The text of civil history requires a\ncontext of this knowledge in the mind of the reader.  For the same\nreason, some of the main facts of the geography of the countries in\nquestion should be present to him.  If we are ignorant of these aids to\nhistory, all history is apt to seem alike to us.  It becomes merely a\nnarrative of men of our own time, in our own country; and then we are\nprone to expect the same views and conduct from them that we do from our\ncontemporaries.  It is true that the heroes of antiquity have been\nrepresented on the stage in bag-wigs, and the rest of the costume of our\ngrandfathers: but it was the great events of their lives that were thus\ntold\u2014the crisis of their passions\u2014and when we are contemplating the\nrepresentation of great passions and their consequences, all minor\nimagery is of little moment.  In a long-drawn narrative, however, the\nmore we have in our minds of what concerned the daily life of the people\nwe read about, the better.  And in general it may be said that history,\nlike travelling, gives a return in proportion to the knowledge that a man\nbrings to it.\n\n\n\nIII.  BY WHOM HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.\n\n\nBefore entering directly on this part of the subject, it is desirable to\nconsider a little the difficulties in the way of writing history.  We all\nknow the difficulty of getting at the truth of a matter which happened\nyesterday, and about which we can examine the living actors upon oath.\nBut in history the most significant things may lack the most important\npart of their evidence.  The people who were making history were not\nthinking of the convenience of future writers of history.  Often the\nhistorian must contrive to get his insight into matters from evidence of\nmen and things which is like bad pictures of them.  The contemporary, if\nhe knew the man, said of the picture, \u201cI should have known it, but it has\nvery little of him in it.\u201d  The poor historian, with no original before\nhim, has to see through the bad picture into the man.  Then, supposing\nour historian rich in well-selected evidence\u2014I say well-selected,\nbecause, as students tell us, for many an historian one authority is of\nthe same weight as another, provided they are both of the same age;\nstill, how difficult is narration even to the man who is rich in\nwell-selected evidence.  What a tendency there is to round off a\nnarrative into falsehood; or else by parenthesis to destroy its pith and\ncontinuity.  Again, the historian knows the end of many of the\ntransactions he narrates.  If he did not, how differently often he would\nnarrate them.  It would be a most instructive thing to give a man the\nmaterials for the account of a great transaction, stopping short of the\nend, and then see how different would be his account from the ordinary\nones.  Fools have been hardly dealt with in the saying that the event is\ntheir master (\u201ceventus stultorum magister\u201d), seeing how it rules us all.\nAnd in nothing more than in history.  The event is always present to our\nminds; along the pathways to it, the historian and the moralist have\nwalked till they are beaten pathways, and we imagine that they were so to\nthe men who first went along them.  Indeed, we almost fancy that these\nancestors of ours, looking along the beaten path, foresaw the event as we\ndo; whereas, they mostly stumbled upon it suddenly in the forest.  This\nknowledge of the end we must, therefore, put down as one of the most\ndangerous pitfalls which beset the writers of history.  Then consider the\ndifficulty in the \u201ccomposition,\u201d to use an artist\u2019s word, of our\nhistorian\u2019s picture.  Before both the artist and the historian lies\nNature as far as the horizon; how shall they choose that portion of it\nwhich has some unity and which shall represent the rest?  What method is\nneedful in the grouping of facts; what learning, what patience, what\naccuracy!\n\nBy whom, then, should history be written?  In the first place, by men of\nsome experience in real life; who have acted and suffered; who have been\nin crowds, and seen, perhaps felt, how madly men can care about nothings;\nwho have observed how much is done in the world in an uncertain manner,\nupon sudden impulses and very little reason; and who, therefore, do not\nthink themselves bound to have a deep-laid theory for all things.  They\nshould be men who have studied the laws of the affections, who know how\nmuch men\u2019s opinions depend on the time in which they live, how they vary\nwith their age and their position.  To make themselves historians, they\nshould also have considered the combinations amongst men and the laws\nthat govern such things; for there are laws.  Moreover our historians,\nlike most men who do great things, must combine in themselves qualities\nwhich are held to belong to opposite natures; must at the same time be\npatient in research and vigorous in imagination, energetic and calm,\ncautious and enterprising.  Such historians, wise, as we may suppose they\nwill be, about the affair of other men, may, let us hope, be sufficiently\nwise about their own affairs to understand that no great work can be done\nwithout great labour, that no great labour ought to look for its reward.\nBut my readers will exclaim as Rasselas to Imlac on hearing the\nrequisites for a poet, \u201cEnough! thou hast convinced me that no human\nbeing can ever be an historian.  Proceed with thy narration.\u201d\n\n\n\nIV.  HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.\n\n\nOne of the first things in writing history is for the historian to\nrecollect that it is history he is writing.  The narrative must not be\noppressed by reflections, even by wise ones.  Least of all should the\nhistorian suffer himself to become entangled by a theory or a system.  If\nhe does, each fact is taken up by him in a particular way: those facts\nthat cannot be so handled cease to be his facts, and those that offer\nthemselves conveniently are received too fondly by him.\n\nThen, although our historian must not be mastered by system, he must have\nsome way of taking up his facts and of classifying them.  They must not\nbe mere isolated units in his eyes, else he is mobbed by them.  And a man\nin the midst of a crowd, though he may know the names and nature of all\nthe crowd, cannot give an account of their doings.  Those who look down\nfrom the housetop must do that.\n\nBut, above all things, the historian must get out of his own age into the\ntime in which he is writing.  Imagination is as much needed for the\nhistorian as the poet.  You may combine bits of books with other bits of\nbooks, and so make some new combinations, and this may be done\naccurately, and, in general, much of the subordinate preparation for\nhistory may be accomplished without any great effort of imagination.  But\nto write history in any large sense of the words, you must be able to\ncomprehend other times.  You must know that there is a right and wrong\nwhich is not your right and wrong, but yet stands upon the right and\nwrong of all ages and all hearts.  You must also appreciate the outward\nlife and colours of the period you write about.  Try to think how the men\nyou are telling of would have spent a day, what were their leading ideas,\nwhat they cared about.  Grasp the body of the time, and give it to us.\nIf not, and these men could look at your history, they would say, \u201cThis\nis all very well; we daresay some of these things did happen; but we were\nnot thinking of these things all day long.  It does not represent us.\u201d\n\nAfter enlarging upon this great requisite, imagination, it seems somewhat\nprosaic to come down to saying that history requires accuracy.  But I\nthink I hear the sighs, and sounds more harsh than sighing, of those who\nhave ever investigated anything, and found by dire experience the\ndeplorable inaccuracy which prevails in the world.  And, therefore, I\nwould say to the historian almost as the first suggestion, \u201cBe accurate;\ndo not make false references, do not mis-state: and men, if they get no\nlight from you, will not execrate you.  You will not stand in the way,\nand have to be explained and got rid of.\u201d\n\nAnother most important matter in writing history, and that indeed in\nwhich the art lies, is the method of narrating.  This is a thing almost\nbeyond rules, like the actual execution in music or painting.  A man\nmight have fairness, accuracy, an insight into other times, great\nknowledge of facts, some power even of arranging them, and yet make a\nnarrative out of it all, so protracted here, so huddled together there,\nthe purpose so buried or confused, that men would agree to acknowledge\nthe merit of the book and leave it unread.  There must be a natural line\nof associations for the narrative to run along.  The separate threads of\nthe narrative must be treated separately, and yet the subject not be\ndealt with sectionally, for that is not the way in which the things\noccurred.  The historian must, therefore, beware that those divisions of\nthe subject which he makes for our ease and convenience, do not induce\nhim to treat his subject in a flimsy manner.  He must not make his story\neasy where it is not so.\n\nAfter all, it is not by rule that a great history is to be written.  Most\nthinkers agree that the main object for the historian is to get an\ninsight into the things which he tells of, and then to tell them with the\nmodesty of a man who is in the presence of great events; and must speak\nabout them carefully, simply, and with but little of himself or of his\naffections thrown into the narration.\n\n\n\nV.  HOW GOOD WRITERS OF HISTORY SHOULD BE CALLED FORTH, AIDED, AND\nREWARDED.\n\n\nMainly by history being properly read.  The direct ways of commanding\nexcellence of any kind are very few, if any.  When a State has found out\nits notable men, it should reward them, and will show its worthiness by\nits measure and mode of reward.  But it cannot purchase them.  It may do\nsomething in the way of aiding them.  In history, for instance, the\nrecords of a nation may be discreetly managed, and some of the minor\nwork, therefore, done to the hand of the historian.  But the most likely\nmethod to ensure good historians is to have a fit audience for them.  And\nthis is a very difficult matter.  In works of general literature, the\ncircle of persons capable of judging is large; even in works of science\nor philosophy it is considerable: but in history, it is a very confined\ncircle.  To the general body of readers, whether the history they read is\ntrue or not is in no way perceptible.  It is quite as amusing to them\nwhen it is told in one way as in another.  There is always mischief in\nerror: but in this case the mischief is remote, or seems so.  For men of\nordinary culture, even if of much intelligence, the difficulty of\ndiscerning what is true or false in the histories they read makes it a\nmatter of the highest duty for those few persons who can give us\ncriticism on historical works, at least to save us from insolent and\nmendacious carelessness in historical writers, if not by just\nencouragement to secure for nations some results not altogether unworthy\nof the great enterprise which the writing of history holds out itself to\nbe.  \u201cHujus enim fidei exempla majorum, vicissitudines rerum, fundamenta\nprudenti\u00e6 civilis, hominum denique nomen et fama commissa sunt.\u201d {183}\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Just wait a minute for me, and do not talk about the essay\ntill I come back.  I am going for Anster\u2019s _Faust_.\n\n_Dunsford_.  What has Ellesmere got in his head?\n\n_Milverton_.  I see.  There is a passage where Faust, in his most\ndiscontented mood, falls foul of history\u2014in his talk to Wagner, if I am\nnot mistaken.\n\n_Dunsford_.  How beautiful it is this evening!  Look at that yellow-green\nnear the sunset.\n\n_Milverton_.  The very words that Coleridge uses.  I always think of them\nwhen I see that tint.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I daresay his words were in my mind, but I have forgotten\nwhat you allude to.\n\n_Milverton_.\n\n    \u201cO Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,\n    To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo\u2019d,\n       All this long eve, so balmy and serene,\n    Have I been gazing on the western sky,\n    And its peculiar tint of yellow-green:\n    And still I gaze\u2014and with how blank an eye!\n    And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,\n    That give away their motion to the stars;\n    Those stars that glide behind them or between,\n    Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:\n    Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew\n    In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;\n    I see them all so excellently fair,\n    I see, not feel how beautiful they are.\u201d\n\n_Dunsford_.  Admirable!  In the _Ode to Dejection_, is it not? where,\ntoo, there are those lines,\n\n    \u201cO Lady! we receive but what we give,\n    And in our life alone does Nature live.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  But here comes Ellesmere with triumphant look.  You look as\njovial, my dear Ellesmere, as if you were a Bentley that had found a\nfalse quantity in a Boyle.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Listen and perpend, my historical friends.\n\n    \u201cTo us, my friend, the times that are gone by\n    Are a mysterious book, sealed with seven seals:\n    That which you call the spirit of ages past\n    Is but, in truth, the spirit of some few authors\n    In which those ages are beheld reflected,\n    With what distortion strange heaven only knows.\n    Oh! often, what a toilsome thing it is\n    This study of thine\u2014at the first glance we fly it.\n    A mass of things confusedly heaped together;\n    A lumber-room of dusty documents,\n    Furnished with all approved court-precedents\n    And old traditional maxims!  History!\n    Facts dramatised say rather\u2014action\u2014plot\u2014\n    Sentiment, everything the writer\u2019s own,\n    As it bests fits the web-work of his story,\n    With here and there a solitary fact\n    Of consequence, by those grave chroniclers,\n    Pointed with many a moral apophthegm,\n    And wise old saws, learned at the puppet-shows.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes; admirable lines; they describe to the life the very\nfaults we have been considering as the faults of badly-written histories.\nI do not see that they do much more.\n\n_Ellesmere_.\n\n    \u201cTo us, my friend, the times that are gone by\n    Are a mysterious book.\u201d\u2014\n\n_Milverton_.  Those two first lines are the full expression of Faust\u2019s\ndiscontent\u2014unmeasured as in the presence of a weak man who could not\ncheck him.  But, if you come to look at the matter closely, you will see\nthat the time present is also in some sense a sealed book to us.  Men\nthat we live with daily we often think as little of as we do of Julius\nC\u00e6sar, I was going to say\u2014but we know much less of them than of him.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I did not mean to say that Faust spoke my sentiments about\nhistory in general.  Still, there are periods of history which we have\nvery few authors to tell us about, and I daresay in some of those cases\nthe colouring of their particular minds gives us a false idea of the\nwhole age they lived in.\n\n_Dunsford_.  This may have happened, certainly.\n\n_Milverton_.  We must be careful not to expect too much from the history\nof past ages, as a means of understanding the present age.  There is\nsomething wanted besides the preceding history to understand each age.\nEach individual life may have a problem of its own, which all other\nbiography accurately set down for us might not enable us to work out.  So\nof each age.  It has something in it not known before, and tends to a\nresult which is not down in any books.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Yet history must be of greatest use in discerning this\ntendency.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes; but the Wagner sort of pedant would get entangled in\nhis round of history\u2014in his historical resemblances.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Now, Milverton, if you were called upon to say what are the\npeculiar characteristics of this age, what should you say?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  One of Dunsford\u2019s questions this, requiring a stout quarto\nvolume with notes in answer.\n\n_Milverton_.  I would rather wait till I was called upon.  I am apt to\nfeel, after I have left off describing the character of any individual\nman, as if I had only just begun.  And I do not see the extent of\ndiscourse that would be needful in attempting to give the characteristics\nof an age.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I think you are prudent to avoid answering Dunsford\u2019s\nquestion.  For my own part, I should prefer giving an account of the age\nwe live in after we have come to the end of it\u2014in the true historical\nfashion.  And so, Dunsford, you must wait for my notions.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I am afraid, Milverton, if you were to write history, you\nwould never make up your mind to condemn anybody.\n\n_Milverton_.  I hope I should not be so inconclusive.  I certainly do\ndislike to see any character, whether of a living or a dead person,\ndisposed of in a summary way.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  For once I will come to the rescue of Milverton.  I really\ndo not see that a man\u2019s belief in the extent and variety of human\ncharacter, and in the difficulty of appreciating the circumstances of\nlife, should prevent him from writing history\u2014from coming to some\nconclusions.  Of course such a man is not likely to write a long course\nof history; but that I hold has been a frequent error in historians\u2014that\nthey have taken up subjects too large for them.\n\n_Milverton_.  If there is as much to be said about men\u2019s character and\nconduct as I think there mostly is, why should we be content with shallow\nviews of them?  Take the outward form of these hills and valleys before\nus.  When we have seen them a few times, we think we know them, but are\nquite mistaken.  Approaching from another quarter, it is almost new\nground to us.  It is a long time before you master the outward form and\nsemblance of any small piece of country that has much life and diversity\nin it.  I often think of this, applying it to our little knowledge of\nmen.  Now, look there a moment: you see that house; close behind it is\napparently a barren tract.  In reality there is nothing of the kind\nthere.  A fertile valley with a great river in it, as you know, is\nbetween that house and the moors.  But the plane of those moors and of\nthe house is coincident from our present point of view.  Had we not, as\neducated men, some distrust of the conclusions of our senses, we should\nbe ready to swear that there was a lonely house on the border of the\nmoors.  It is the same in judging of men.  We see a man connected with a\ntrain of action which is really not near him, absolutely foreign to him,\nperhaps, but in our eyes that is what he is always connected with.  If\nthere were not a Being who understands us immeasurably better than other\nmen can, immeasurably better than we do ourselves, we should be badly\noff.\n\nSuch precautionary thoughts as these must be useful, I contend.  They\nneed not make us indifferent to character, or prevent us from forming\njudgments where we must form them, but they show us what a wide thing we\nare talking about when we are judging the life and nature of a man.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I am sure, Dunsford, you are already convinced: you seldom\nwant more than a slight pretext for going over to the charitable side of\nthings.  You are only afraid of not dealing stoutly enough with bad\nthings and people.  Do not be afraid though.  As long as you have me to\nabuse, you will say many unjust things against me, you know, so that you\nmay waste yourself in good thoughts about the rest of the world, past and\npresent.  Do you know the lawyer\u2019s story I had in my mind then?  \u201cMany\ntimes when I have had a good case,\u201d he said, \u201cI have failed; but then I\nhave often succeeded with bad cases.  And so justice is done.\u201d\n\n_Milverton_.  To return to the subject.  It is not a sort of equalising\nwant of thought about men that I desire; only not to be rash in a matter\nthat requires all our care and prudence.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, I believe I am won over.  But now to another point.  I\nthink, Milverton, that you have said hardly anything about the use of\nhistory as an incentive to good deeds and a discouragement to evil ones.\n\n_Milverton_.  I ought to have done so.  Bolingbroke gives in his \u201cLetters\non History,\u201d talking of this point, a passage from Tacitus, \u201cPr\u00e6cipuum\nmunus annalium,\u201d\u2014can you go on with it, Dunsford?\n\n_Dunsford_.  Yes, I think I can.  It is a passage I have often seen\nquoted.  \u201cPr\u00e6cipuum munus annalium, reor, ne virtutes sileantur; utque\npravis dictis factisque ex posteritate et infami\u00e2 metus sit.\u201d\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well done; Dunsford may have invented it, though, for aught\nthat we know, Milverton, and be passing himself off upon us for Tacitus.\n\n_Milverton_.  Then Bolingbroke goes on to say (I wish I could give you\nhis own flowing words), that the great duty of history is to form a\ntribunal like that amongst the Egyptians which Diodorus tells of, where\nboth common men and princes were tried after their deaths, and received\nappropriate honour or disgrace.  The sentence was pronounced, he says,\ntoo late to correct or to recompense; but it was pronounced in time to\nrender examples of general instruction to mankind.  Now, what I was going\nto remark upon this is, that Bolingbroke understates his case.  History\nwell written is a present correction, and a foretaste of recompense, to\nthe man who is now struggling with difficulties and temptations, now\novercast by calumny and cloudy misrepresentation.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Yes; many a man makes an appeal to posterity which will\nnever come before the court; but if there were no such court of appeal\u2014\n\n_Milverton_.  A man\u2019s conviction that justice will be done to him in\nhistory is a secondary motive, and not one which, of itself, will compel\nhim to do just and great things; but, at any rate, it forms one of the\nbenefits that flow from history, and it becomes stronger as histories are\nbetter written.  Much may be said against care for fame; much also\nagainst care for present repute.  There is a diviner impulse than either\nat the doing of any actions that are much worth doing.  As a correction,\nhowever, this anticipation of the judgment of history may really be very\npowerful.  It is a great enlightenment of conscience to read the opinions\nof men on deeds similar to those we are engaged in or meditating.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I think Bolingbroke\u2019s idea, which I imagine was more general\nthan yours, is more important: namely, that this judicial proceeding,\nmentioned by Diodorus Siculus, gave significant lessons to all people,\nnot merely to those who had any chance of having their names in history.\n\n_Milverton_.  Certainly: for this is one of Bolingbroke\u2019s chief points,\nif I recollect rightly.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Our conversations are much better things than your essays,\nMilverton.\n\n_Milverton_.  Of course, I am bound to say so: but what made you think of\nthat now?\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Why, I was thinking how in talk we can know exactly where\nwe agree or differ.  But I never like to interrupt the essay.  I never\nknow when it would come to an end if I did.  And so it swims on like a\nsermon, having all its own way: one cannot put in an awkward question in\na weak part, and get things looked at in various ways.\n\n_Dunsford_.  I suppose, then, Ellesmere, you would like to interrupt\nsermons.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Why, yes, sometimes\u2014do not throw sticks at me, Dunsford.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Well, it is absurd to be angry with you; because if you long\nto interrupt Milverton with his captious perhapses and probablys, of\ncourse you will be impatient with discourses which do, to a certain\nextent, assume that the preacher and the hearers are in unison upon great\nmatters.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  I am afraid to say anything about sermons, for fear of the\nargumentum baculinum from Dunsford; for many essay writers, like\nMilverton, delight to wind up their paragraphs with complete little\naphorisms\u2014shutting up something certainly, but shutting out something\ntoo.  I could generally pause upon them a little.\n\n_Milverton_.  Of course one may err, Ellesmere, in too much aphorising as\nin too much of anything.  But your argument goes against all expression\nof opinion, which must be incomplete, especially when dealing with\nmatters that cannot be circumscribed by exact definitions.  Otherwise, a\ncode of wisdom might be made which the fool might apply as well as the\nwisest man.  Even the best proverb, though often the expression of the\nwidest experience in the choicest language, can be thoroughly misapplied.\nIt cannot embrace the whole of the subject, and apply in all cases like a\nmathematical formula.  Its wisdom lies in the ear of the hearer.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, I not know that there is anything more to say about\nthe essay.  I suppose you are aware, Dunsford, that Milverton does not\nintend to give us any more essays for some time.  He is distressing his\nmind about some facts which he wants to ascertain before he will read any\nmore to us.  I imagine we are to have something historical next.\n\n_Milverton_.  Something in which historical records are useful.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Really it is wonderful to see how beautifully human nature\naccommodates itself to anything, even to the listening to essays.  I\nshall miss them.\n\n_Milverton_.  You may miss the talk before and after.\n\n_Ellesmere_.  Well, there is no knowing how much of that is provoked\n(provoked is a good word, is it not?) by the essays.\n\n_Dunsford_.  Then, for the present, we have come to an end of our\nreadings.\n\n_Milverton_.  Yes, but I trust at no distant time to have something more\nto try your critical powers and patience upon.  I hope that that old\ntower will yet see us meet together here on many a sunny day, discussing\nvarious things in friendly council.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n Printed by Cassell and Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.\n                                  12\u2014391\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES.\n\n\n{12}  See _Statesman_, p. 30.\n\n{42}  The passage which must have been alluded to is this: \u201cThe stricter\ntenets of Calvinism, which allow no medium between grace and reprobation,\nand doom man to eternal punishment for every breach of the moral law, as\nan equal offence against Infinite truth and justice, proceed (like the\nparadoxical doctrine of the Stoics), from taking a half-view of this\nsubject, and considering man as amenable only to the dictates of his\nunderstanding and his conscience, and not excusable from the temptations\nand frailty of human ignorance and passion.  The mixing up of religion\nand morality together, or the making us accountable for every word,\nthought, or action, under no less a responsibility than our everlasting\nfuture welfare or misery, has also added incalculably to the difficulties\nof self-knowledge, has superinduced a violent and spurious state of\nfeeling, and made it almost impossible to distinguish the boundaries\nbetween the true and false, in judging of human conduct and motives.  A\nreligious man is afraid of looking into the state of his soul, lest at\nthe same time he should reveal it to heaven; and tries to persuade\nhimself that by shutting his eyes to his true character and feelings,\nthey will remain a profound secret, both here and hereafter.\u201d\n\n{53}  This was one of the passages which Milverton afterwards read to\nus:\u2014\n\n    \u201cThus, however much may be gained for the world as a whole by this\n    fragmentary cultivation, it is not to be denied that the individuals\n    whom it befalls are cursed for the benefit of the world.  An athletic\n    frame, it is true, is fashioned by gymnastic exercises; but a form of\n    beauty only by free and uniform action.  Just so the exertions of\n    single talents can create extraordinary men indeed; but happy and\n    perfect men only by their uniform temperature.  And in what relation\n    should we stand, then, to the past and coming ages, if the\n    cultivation of human nature made necessary such a sacrifice?  We\n    should have been the slaves of humanity, and drudged for her century\n    after century, and stamped upon our mutilated natures the humiliating\n    traces of our bondage\u2014that the coming race might nurse its moral\n    healthfulness in blissful leisure, and unfold the free growth of its\n    humanity!\n\n    \u201cBut can it be intended that man should neglect himself for any\n    particular design?  Ought Nature to deprive us, by its design, of a\n    perfection which Reason, by its own, prescribes to us?  Then it must\n    be false that the development of single faculties makes the sacrifice\n    of totality necessary; or, if indeed the law of Nature presses thus\n    heavily, it becomes us to restore, by a higher art, this totality in\n    our nature which art has destroyed.\u201d\u2014_The Philosophical and\n    \u00c6sthetical Letters and Essays of_ SCHILLER, _Translated by_ J. WEISS,\n    pp. 74, 75.\n\n{93}  Madame Necker de Saussure\u2019s maxim about firmness with children has\nsuggested the above.  \u201cCe que plie ne peut servir d\u2019appui, et l\u2019enfant\nveut \u00eatre appuy\u00e9.  Non-seulement il en a besoin, mais il le d\u00e9sire, mais\nsa tendresse la plus constante n\u2019est qu\u2019\u00e0 ce prix.  Si vous lui faites\nl\u2019effet d\u2019un autre enfant, si vous partagez ses passions, ses\nvacillations continuelles, si vous lui rendez tous ses mouvements en les\naugmentant, soit par la contrari\u00e9t\u00e9, soit par un exc\u00e8s de complaisance,\nil pourra se servir de vous comme d\u2019un jouet, mais non \u00eatre heureux en\nvotre pr\u00e9sence; il pleurera, se mutinera, et bient\u00f4t le souvenir d\u2019un\ntemps de d\u00e9sordre et d\u2019humeur se liera avec votre id\u00e9e.  Vous n\u2019avez pas\n\u00e9t\u00e9 le soutien de votre enfant, vous ne l\u2019avez pas pr\u00e9serv\u00e9 de cette\nfluctuation perp\u00e9tuelle de la volont\u00e9, maladie des \u00eatres faibles et\nlivr\u00e9s \u00e0 une imagination vive; vous n\u2019avez assur\u00e9 ni sa paix, ni sa\nsagesse, ni son bonheur, pourquoi vous croirait-il sa m\u00e8re.\u201d\u2014_L\u2019Education\nProgressive_, vol. i., p. 228.\n\n{116a}  See _Health of Towns Report_, vol. i., p. 336.  A similar result\nmay be deduced from a similar table made by the Rev. J. Clay, of Preston.\nSee the same Report and vol., p. 175.\n\n{116b}  See _Health of Towns Report_, vol. i., p. 75.\n\n{117a}  See Dr. Arnott\u2019s letter, _Claims of Labour_, p. 282.\n\n{117b}  By zinc ventilators, for instance, in the windows and openings\ninto the flues at the top of the rooms.  See _Health of Towns Report_,\n1844, vol. i., pp. 76, 77.  Mr. Coulhart\u2019s evidence.\u2014_Ibid._, pp. 307,\n308.\n\n{117c}  There are several thousand gratings to sewers and drains which\nare utterly useless on account of their position, and positively\ninjurious from their emanations.\u2014Mr. Guthrie\u2019s evidence.\u2014_Ibid._, vol.\nii., p. 255.\n\n{118}  Mr. Wood states that the masters and mistresses were generally\nignorant of the depressing and unhealthy effects of the atmosphere which\nsurrounded them, and he mentions the case of the mistress of a\ndame-school who replied, when he pointed out this to her, \u201cthat the\nchildren thrived best in dirt!\u201d\u2014_Health of Towns Report_, vol. i., pp.\n146, 147.\n\n{126}  See \u201cThe Fair Maid of Perth.\u201d\n\n{161}  See \u201cHealth of Towns Report,\u201d 1844, vol. i., p. 44.\n\n{183}  Bacon, _de Augmentis Scientiarum_.","title":"Friends in Council \u2014 First Series","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":50926}