Milverton. Apropos of music in country places, when I was going about last year in the neighbouring county, I saw such a pretty scene at one of the towns. They had got up a band, which played once a week in the evening. It was a beautiful summer evening, and the window of my room at the end overlooked the open space they had chosen for their performances. There was the great man of the neighbourhood in his carriage looking as if he came partly on duty, as well as for pleasure. Then there were burly tradesmen, with an air of quiet satisfaction, sauntering about, or leaning against railings. Some were no doubt critical—thought that Will Miller did not play as well as usual this evening. Will's young wife, who had come out to look again at him in his band dress (for the band had a uniform), thought differently. Little boys broke out into imaginary polkas, having some distant reference to the music: not without grace though. The sweep was pre-eminent: as if he would say, "Dirty and sooty as I am I have a great deal of fun in me. Indeed, what would May-day be but for me?" Studious little boys of the free-school, all green grasshopper-looking, walked about as boys knowing something of Latin. Here and there went a couple of them in childish loving way, with their arms about each other's necks. Matrons and shy young maidens sat upon the door-steps near. Many a merry laugh filled up the interludes of music. And when evening came softly down upon us, the band finished with "God save the Queen," the little circle of those who would hear the last note moved off, there was a clattering of shutters, a shining of lights through casement-windows, and soon the only sound to be heard was the rough voice of some villager, who would have been too timid to adventure anything by daylight, but now sang boldly out as he went homewards.

Ellesmere. Very pretty, but it sounds to me somewhat fabulous.

Milverton. I assure you—

Ellesmere. Yes, you were tired, had a good dinner, read a speech for or against the corn-laws, fell asleep of course, and had this ingenious dream, which, to this day, you believe to have been a reality. I understand it all.

Milverton. I wish I could have many more such dreams.



CHAPTER V.



Our last conversation broke off abruptly on the entrance of a visitor: we forgot to name a time for our next meeting; and when I came again, I found Milverton alone in his study. He was reading Count Rumford's essays.

Dunsford. So you are reading Count Rumford. What is it that interests you there?

Milverton. Everything he writes about. He is to me a delightful writer. He throws so much life into all his writings. Whether they are about making the most of food or fuel, or propounding the benefits of bathing, or inveighing against smoke, it is that he went and saw and did and experimented himself upon himself. His proceedings at Munich to feed the poor are more interesting than many a novel. It is surprising, too, how far he was before the world in all the things he gave his mind to.

Here Ellesmere entered.

Ellesmere. I heard you were come, Dunsford: I hope we shall have an essay to-day. My critical faculties have been dormant for some days, and want to be roused a little. Milverton was talking to you about Count Rumford when I came in, was he not? Ah, the Count is a great favourite with Milverton when he is down here; but there is a book upstairs which is Milverton's real favourite just now, a portentous-looking book; some relation to a blue-book, something about sewerage, or health of towns, or public improvements, over which said book our friend here goes into enthusiasms. I am sure if it could be reduced to the size of that tatterdemalion Horace that he carries about, the poor little Horace would be quite supplanted.

Milverton. Now, I must tell you, Dunsford, that Ellesmere himself took up this book he talks about, and it was a long time before he put it down.

Ellesmere. Yes, there is something in real life, even though it is in the unheroic part of it, that interests one. I mean to get through the book.

Dunsford. What are we to have to-day for our essay?

Milverton. Let us adjourn to the garden, and I will read you an essay on Greatness, if I can find it.

We went to our favourite place, and Milverton read us the following essay.

GREATNESS.

You cannot substitute any epithet for great, when you are talking of great men. Greatness is not general dexterity carried to any extent; nor proficiency in any one subject of human endeavour. There are great astronomers, great scholars, great painters, even great poets who are very far from great men. Greatness can do without success and with it. William is greater in his retreats than Marlborough in his victories. On the other hand, the uniformity of Caesar's success does not dull his greatness. Greatness is not in the circumstances, but in the man.

What does this greatness then consist in? Not in a nice balance of qualities, purposes, and powers. That will make a man happy, a successful man, a man always in his right depth. Nor does it consist in absence of errors. We need only glance back at any list that can be made of great men, to be convinced of that. Neither does greatness consist in energy, though often accompanied by it. Indeed, it is rather the breadth of the waters than the force of the current that we look to, to fulfil our idea of greatness. There is no doubt that energy acting upon a nature endowed with the qualities that we sum up in the word cleverness, and directed to a few clear purposes, produces a great effect, and may sometimes be mistaken for greatness. If a man is mainly bent upon his own advancement, it cuts many a difficult knot of policy for him, and gives a force and distinctness to his mode of going on which looks grand. The same happens if he has one pre-eminent idea of any kind, even though it should be a narrow one. Indeed, success in life is mostly gained by unity of purpose; whereas greatness often fails by reason of its having manifold purposes, but it does not cease to be greatness on that account.

If greatness can be shut up in qualities, it will be found to consist in courage and in openness of mind and soul. These qualities may not seem at first to be so potent. But see what growth there is in them. The education of a man of open mind is never ended. Then, with openness of soul, a man sees some way into all other souls that come near him, feels with them, has their experience, is in himself a people. Sympathy is the universal solvent. Nothing is understood without it. The capacity of a man, at least for understanding, may almost be said to vary according to his powers of sympathy. Again, what is there that can counteract selfishness like sympathy? Selfishness may be hedged in by minute watchfulness and self-denial, but it is counteracted by the nature being encouraged to grow out and fix its tendrils upon foreign objects.

The immense defect that want of sympathy is, may be strikingly seen in the failure of the many attempts that have been made in all ages to construct the Christian character, omitting sympathy. It has produced numbers of people walking up and down one narrow plank of self-restraint, pondering over their own merits and demerits, keeping out, not the world exactly, but their fellow-creatures from their hearts, and caring only to drive their neighbours before them on this plank of theirs, or to push them headlong. Thus, with many virtues, and much hard work at the formation of character, we have had splendid bigots or censorious small people.

But sympathy is warmth and light too. It is, as it were, the moral atmosphere connecting all animated natures. Putting aside, for a moment, the large differences that opinions, language, and education make between men, look at the innate diversity of character. Natural philosophers were amazed when they thought they had found a new-created species. But what is each man but a creature such as the world has not before seen? Then think how they pour forth in multitudinous masses, from princes delicately nurtured to little boys on scrubby commons, or in dark cellars. How are these people to be understood, to be taught to understand each other, but by those who have the deepest sympathies with all? There cannot be a great man without large sympathy. There may be men who play loud- sounding parts in life without it, as on the stage, where kings and great people sometimes enter who are only characters of secondary import—deputy great men. But the interest and the instruction lie with those who have to feel and suffer most.

Add courage to this openness we have been considering, and you have a man who can own himself in the wrong, can forgive, can trust, can adventure, can, in short, use all the means that insight and sympathy endow him with.

I see no other essential characteristics in the greatness of nations than there are in the greatness of individuals. Extraneous circumstances largely influence nations as individuals; and make a larger part of the show of the former than of the latter; as we are wont to consider no nation great that is not great in extent or resources, as well as in character. But of two nations, equal in other respects, the superiority must belong to the one which excels in courage and openness of mind and soul.

Again, in estimating the relative merits of different periods of the world, we must employ the same tests of greatness that we use to individuals. To compare, for instance, the present and the past. What astounds us most in the past is the wonderful intolerance and cruelty: a cruelty constantly turning upon the inventors: an intolerance provoking ruin to the thing it would foster. The most admirable precepts are thrown from time to time upon this cauldron of human affairs, and oftentimes they only seem to make it blaze the higher. We find men devoting the best part of their intellects to the invariable annoyance and persecution of their fellows. You might think that the earth brought forth with more abundant fruitfulness in the past than now, seeing that men found so much time for cruelty, but that you read of famines and privations which these latter days cannot equal. The recorded violent deaths amount to millions. And this is but a small part of the matter. Consider the modes of justice; the use of torture, for instance. What must have been the blinded state of the wise persons (wise for their day) who used torture? Did they ever think themselves, "What should we not say if we were subjected to this?" Many times they must really have desired to get at the truth; and such was their mode of doing it. Now, at the risk of being thought "a laudator" of time present, I would say, here is the element of greatness we have made progress in. We are more open in mind and soul. We have arrived (some of us at least) at the conclusion that men may honestly differ without offence. We have learned to pity each other more. There is a greatness in modern toleration which our ancestors knew not.

Then comes the other element of greatness, courage. Have we made progress in that? This is a much more dubious question. The subjects of terror vary so much in different times that it is difficult to estimate the different degrees of courage shown in resisting them. Men fear public opinion now as they did in former times the Star Chamber; and those awful goddesses, Appearances, are to us what the Fates were to the Greeks. It is hardly possible to measure the courage of a modern against that of an ancient; but I am unwilling to believe but that enlightenment must strengthen courage.

The application of the tests of greatness, as in the above instance, is a matter of detail and of nice appreciation, as to the results of which men must be expected to differ largely: the tests themselves remain invariable—openness of nature to admit the light of love and reason, and courage to pursue it.

——-

Ellesmere. I agree to your theory, as far as openness of nature is concerned; but I do not much like to put that half-brute thing, courage, so high.

Milverton. Well, you cannot have greatness without it: you may have well-intentioned people and far-seeing people; but if they have no stoutness of heart, they will only be shifty or remonstrant, nothing like great.

Ellesmere. You mean will, not courage. Without will, your open- minded, open-hearted man may be like a great, rudderless vessel driven about by all winds: not a small craft, but a most uncertain one.

Milverton. No, I mean both: both will and courage. Courage is the body to will.

Ellesmere. I believe you are right in that; but do not omit will. It amused me to see how you brought in one of your old notions—that this age is not contemptible. You scribbling people are generally on the other side.

Milverton. You malign us. If I must give any account for my personal predilection for modern times, it consists perhaps in this, that we may now speak our mind. What Tennyson says of his own land,

"The land where, girt with friend or foe, A man may say the thing he will,"—

may be said, in some measure, of the age in which we live. This is an inexpressible comfort. This doubles life. These things surely may be said in favour of the present age, not with a view to puff it up, but so far to encourage ourselves, as we may by seeing that the world does not go on for nothing, that all the misery, blood, and toil that have been spent, were not poured out in vain. Could we have our ancestors again before us, would they not rejoice at seeing what they had purchased for us: would they think it any compliment to them to extol their times at the expense of the present, and so to intimate that their efforts had led to nothing?

Ellesmere. "I doubt," as Lord Eldon would have said; no, upon second thoughts, I do not doubt. I feel assured that a good many of these said ancestors you are calling up would be much discomforted at finding that all their suffering had led to no sure basis of persecution of the other side.

Dunsford. I wonder, Ellesmere, what you would have done in persecuting times. What escape would your sarcasm have found for itself?

Milverton. Some orthodox way, I daresay. I do not think he would have been particularly fond of martyrdom.

Ellesmere. No. I have no taste for making torches for truth, or being one: I prefer humane darkness to such illumination. At the same time one cannot tell lies; and if one had been questioned about the incomprehensibilities which men in former days were so fierce upon, one must have shown that one disagreed with all parties.

Dunsford. Do not say "one:" I should not have disagreed with the great Protestant leaders in the Reformation, for instance.

Ellesmere. Humph.

Milverton. If we get aground upon the Reformation, we shall never push off again—else would I say something far from complimentary to those Protestant proceedings which we may rather hope were Tudoresque than Protestant.

Ellesmere. No, that is not fair. The Tudors were a coarse, fierce race; but it will not do to lay the faults of their times upon them only. Look at Elizabeth's ministers. They had about as much notion of religious tolerance as they had of Professor Wheatstone's telegraph. It was not a growth of that age.

Milverton. I do not know. You have Cardinal Pole and the Earl of Essex, both tolerant men in the midst of bigots.

Ellesmere. Well, as you said, Milverton, we shall never push off, if we once get aground on this subject.

Dunsford. I am in fault: so I will take upon myself to bring you quite away from the Reformation. I have been thinking of that comparison in the essay of the present with the past. Such comparisons seem to me very useful, as they best enable us to understand our own times. And, then, when we have ascertained the state and tendency of our own age, we ought to strive to enrich it with those qualities which are complementary to its own. Now with all this toleration, which delights you so much, dear Milverton, is it not an age rather deficient in caring about great matters?

Milverton. If you mean great speculative matters, I might agree with you; but if you mean what I should call the greatest matters, such as charity, humanity, and the like, I should venture to differ with you, Dunsford.

Dunsford. I do not like to see the world indifferent to great speculative matters. I then fear shallowness and earthiness.

Milverton. It is very difficult to say what the world is thinking of now. It is certainly wrong to suppose that this is a shallow age because it is not driven by one impulse. As civilisation advances, it becomes more difficult to estimate what is going on, and we set it all down as confusion. Now there is not one "great antique heart," whose beatings we can count, but many impulses, many circles of thought in which men are moving many objects. Men are not all in the same state of progress, so cannot be moved in masses as of old. At one time chivalry urged all men, then the Church, and the phenomena were few, simple, and broad, or at least they seem so in history.

Ellesmere. Very true; still I agree somewhat with Dunsford, that men are not agitated as they used to be by the great speculative questions. I account for it in this way, that the material world has opened out before us, and we cannot but look at that, and must play with it and work at it. I would say, too, that philosophy had been found out, and there is something in that. Still, I think if it were not for the interest now attaching to material things, great intellectual questions, not exactly of the old kind, would arise and agitate the world.

Milverton. There is one thing in my mind that may confirm your view. I cannot but think that the enlarged view we have of the universe must in some measure damp personal ambition. What is it to be a King, Sheik, Tetrarch, or Emperor, over a bit of a little bit? Macbeth's speech, "we'd jump the life to come," is a thing a man with modern lights, however madly ambitious, would hardly utter.

Dunsford. Religious lights, Milverton.

Milverton. Of course not, if he had them; but I meant scientific lights. Sway over our fellow-creatures, at any rate anything but mental sway, has shrunk into less proportions.

Ellesmere. I have been looking over the essay. I think you may put in somewhere—that that age would probably be the greatest in which there was the least difference between great men and the people in general—when the former were only neglected, not hunted down.

Milverton. Yes.

Ellesmere. You are rather lengthy here about the cruelties to be found in history; but we are apt to forget these matters.

Milverton. They always press upon my mind.

Dunsford. And on mine. I do not like to read much of history for that very reason. I get so sick at heart about it all.

Milverton. Ah, yes, history is a stupendous thing. To read it is like looking at the stars; we turn away in awe and perplexity. Yet there is some method running through the little affairs of man as through the multitude of suns, seemingly to us as confused as routed armies in full flight.

Dunsford. Some law of love.

Ellesmere. I am afraid it is not in the past alone that we should be awestruck with horrors: we, who have a slave-trade still on earth. But, to go back to the essay, I like what you say about the theory of constructing the Christian character without geniality; only you do not go far enough. You are afraid. People are for ever talking, especially you philanthropical people, about making others happy. I do not know any way so sure of making others happy as of being so oneself, to begin with. I do not mean that people are to be self-absorbed; but they are to drink in nature and life a little. From a genial, wisely-developed man good things radiate; whereas you must allow, Milverton, that benevolent people are very apt to be one-sided and fussy, and not of the sweetest temper if others will not be good and happy in their way.

Milverton. That is really not fair. Of course, acid, small-minded people carry their narrow notions and their acidity into their benevolence. Benevolence is no abstract perfection. Men will express their benevolence according to their other gifts or want of gifts. If it is strong, it overcomes other things in the character which would be hindrances to it; but it must speak in the language of the soul it is in.

Ellesmere. Come, let us go and see the pigs. I hear them grunting over their dinners in the farmyard. I like to see creatures who can be happy without a theory.



CHAPTER VI.



The next time that I came over to Worth-Ashton it was raining, and I found my friends in the study.

"Well, Dunsford," said Ellesmere, "is it not comfortable to have our sessions here for once, and to be looking out on a good solid English wet day?"

Dunsford. Rather a fluid than a solid. But I agree with you in thinking it is very comfortable here.

Ellesmere. I like to look upon the backs of books. First I think how much of the owner's inner life and character is shown in his books; then perhaps I wonder how he got such a book which seems so remote from all that I know of him—

Milverton. I shall turn my books the wrong side upwards when you come into the study.

Ellesmere. But what amuses me most is to see the odd way in which books get together, especially in the library of a man who reads his books and puts them up again wherever there is room. Now here is a charming party: "A Treatise on the Steam-Engine" between "Locke on Christianity" and Madame de Stael's "Corinne." I wonder what they talk about at night when we are all asleep. Here is another happy juxtaposition: old Clarendon next to a modern metaphysician whom he would positively loathe. Here is Sadler next to Malthus, and Horsley next to Priestley; but this sort of thing happens most in the best regulated libraries. It is a charming reflection for controversial writers, that their works will be put together on the same shelves, often between the same covers; and that, in the minds of educated men, the name of one writer will be sure to recall the name of the other. So they go down to posterity as a brotherhood.

Milverton. To complete Ellesmere's theory, we may say that all those injuries to books which we choose to throw upon some wretched worm, are but the wounds from rival books.

Ellesmere. Certainly. But now let us proceed to polish up the weapons of another of these spiteful creatures.

Dunsford. Yes. What is to be our essay to-day, Milverton?

Milverton. Fiction.

Ellesmere. Now, that is really unfortunate. Fiction is just the subject to be discussed—no, not discussed, talked over—out of doors on a hot day, all of us lying about in easy attitudes on the grass, Dunsford with his gaiters forming a most picturesque and prominent figure. But there is nothing complete in this life. "Surgit amari aliquid:" and so we must listen to Fiction in arm- chairs.

FICTION.

The influence of works of fiction is unbounded. Even the minds of well-informed people are often more stored with characters from acknowledged fiction than from history or biography, or the real life around them. We dispute about these characters as if they were realities. Their experience is our experience; we adopt their feelings, and imitate their acts. And so there comes to be something traditional even in the management of the passions. Shakespeare's historical plays were the only history to the Duke of Marlborough. Thousands of Greeks acted under the influence of what Achilles or Ulysses did, in Homer. The poet sings of the deeds that shall be. He imagines the past; he forms the future.

Yet how surpassingly interesting is real life when we get an insight into it. Occasionally a great genius lifts up the veil of history, and we see men who once really were alive, who did not always live only in history; or, amidst the dreary page of battles, levies, sieges, and the sleep-inducing weavings and unweavings of political combination, we come, ourselves, across some spoken or written words of the great actors of the time, and are then fascinated by the life and reality of these things. Could you have the life of any man really portrayed to you, sun-drawn as it were, its hopes, its fears, its revolutions of opinion in each day, its most anxious wishes attained, and then, perhaps, crystallising into its blackest regrets—such a work would go far to contain all histories, and be the greatest lesson of love, humility, and tolerance, that men had ever read.

Now fiction does attempt something like the above. In history we are cramped by impertinent facts that must, however, be set down; by theories that must be answered; evidence that must be weighed; views that must be taken. Our facts constantly break off just where we should wish to examine them most closely. The writer of fiction follows his characters into the recesses of their hearts. There are no closed doors for him. His puppets have no secrets from their master. He plagues you with no doubts, no half-views, no criticism. Thus they thought, he tells you; thus they looked, thus they acted. Then, with every opportunity for scenic arrangement (for though his characters are confidential with him, he is only as confidential with his reader as the interest of the story will allow), it is not to be wondered at that the majority of readers should look upon history as a task, but tales of fiction as a delight.

The greatest merit of fiction is the one so ably put forward by Sir James Mackintosh, namely, that it creates and nourishes sympathy. It extends this sympathy, too, in directions where, otherwise, we hardly see when it would have come. But it may be objected that this sympathy is indiscriminate, and that we are in danger of mixing up virtue and vice, and blurring both, if we are led to sympathise with all manner of wrong-doers. But, in the first place, virtue and vice are so mixed in real life, that it is well to be somewhat prepared for that fact; and, moreover, the sympathy is not wrongly directed. Who has not felt intense sympathy for Macbeth? Yet could he be alive again, with evil thoughts against "the gracious Duncan," and could he see into all that has been felt for him, would that be an encouragement to murder? The intense pity of wise people for the crimes of others, when rightly represented, is one of the strongest antidotes against crime. We have taken the extreme case of sympathy being directed towards bad men. How often has fiction made us sympathise with obscure suffering and retiring greatness, with the world-despised, and especially with those mixed characters in whom we might otherwise see but one colour—with Shylock and with Hamlet, with Jeanie Deans and with Claverhouse, with Sancho Panza as well as with Don Quixote.

On the other hand, there is a danger of too much converse with fiction leading us into dream-land, or rather into lubber-land. Of course this "too much converse" implies large converse with inferior writers. Such writers are too apt to make life as they would have it for themselves. Sometimes, also, they must make it to suit booksellers' rules. Having such power over their puppets they abuse it. They can kill these puppets, change their natures suddenly, reward or punish them so easily, that it is no wonder they are led to play fantastic tricks with them. Now, if a sedulous reader of the works of such writers should form his notions of real life from them, he would occasionally meet with rude shocks when he encountered the realities of that life.

For my own part, notwithstanding all the charms of life in swiftly- written novels, I prefer real life. It is true that, in the former, everything breaks off round, every little event tends to some great thing, everybody one meets is to exercise some great influence for good or ill upon one's fate. I take it for granted one fancies oneself the hero. Then all one's fancy is paid in ready money, or at least one can draw upon it at the end of the third volume. One leaps to remote wealth and honour by hairbreadth chances; and one's uncle in India always dies opportunely. To be sure the thought occurs, that if this novel life could be turned into real life, one might be the uncle in India and not the hero of the tale. But that is a trifling matter, for at any rate one should carry on with spirit somebody else's story. On the whole, however, as I said before, I prefer real life, where nothing is tied up neatly, but all in odds and ends; where the doctrine of compensation enters largely, where we are often most blamed when we least deserve it, where there is no third volume to make things straight, and where many an Augustus marries many a Belinda, and, instead of being happy ever afterwards, finds that there is a growth of trials and troubles for each successive period of man's life.

In considering the subject of fiction, the responsibility of the writers thereof is a matter worth pointing out. We see clearly enough that historians are to be limited by facts and probabilities; but we are apt to make a large allowance for the fancies of writers of fiction. We must remember, however, that fiction is not falsehood. If a writer puts abstract virtues into book-clothing, and sends them upon stilts into the world, he is a bad writer: if he classifies men, and attributes all virtue to one class and all vice to another, he is a false writer. Then, again, if his ideal is so poor, that he fancies man's welfare to consist in immediate happiness; if he means to paint a great man and paints only a greedy one, he is a mischievous writer and not the less so, although by lamplight and amongst a juvenile audience, his coarse scene-painting should be thought very grand. He may be true to his own fancy, but he is false to Nature. A writer, of course, cannot get beyond his own ideal: but at least he should see that he works up to it: and if it is a poor one, he had better write histories of the utmost concentration of dulness, than amuse us with unjust and untrue imaginings.

——-

Ellesmere. I am glad you have kept to the obvious things about fiction. It would have been a great nuisance to have had to follow you through intricate theories about what fiction consists in, and what are its limits, and so on. Then we should have got into questions touching the laws of representation generally, and then into art, of which, between ourselves, you know very little.

Dunsford. Talking of representation, what do you two, who have now seen something of the world, think about representative government?

Ellesmere. Dunsford plumps down upon us sometimes with awful questions: what do you think of all philosophy? or what is your opinion of life in general? Could not you throw in a few small questions of that kind, together with your representative one, and we might try to answer them all at once. Dunsford is only laughing at us, Milverton.

Milverton. No, I know what was in Dunsford's mind when he asked that question. He has had his doubts and misgivings, when he has been reading a six nights' debate (for the people in the country I daresay do read those things), whether representative government is the most complete device the human mind could suggest for getting at wise rulers.

Ellesmere. It is a doubt which has crossed my mind.

Milverton. And mine; but the doubt, if it has ever been more than mere petulance, has not had much practical weight with me. Look how the business of the world is managed. There are a few people who think out things, and a few who execute. The former are not to be secured by any device. They are gifts. The latter may be well chosen, have often been well chosen, under other forms of government than the representative one. I believe that the favourites of kings have been a superior race of men. Even a fool does not choose a fool for a favourite. He knows better than that: he must have something to lean against. But between the thinkers and the doers (if, indeed, we ought to make such a distinction), WHAT A NUMBER OF USEFUL LINKS THERE ARE IN A REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT on account of the much larger number of people admitted into some share of government. What general cultivation must come from that, and what security! Of course, everything has its wrong side; and from this number of people let in there comes declamation and claptrap and mob-service, which is much the same thing as courtiership was in other times. But then, to make the comparison a fair one, you must take the wrong side of any other form of government that has been devised.

Dunsford. Well, but so much power centring in the lower house of Parliament, and the getting into Parliament being a thing which is not very inviting to the kind of people one would most like to see there, do you not think that the ablest men are kept away?

Milverton. Yes; but if you make your governing body a unit or a ten, or any small number, how is this power, unless it is Argus- eyed, and myriad-minded, and right-minded too, to choose the right men any better than they are found now? The great danger, as it appears to me, of representative government is lest it should slide down from representative government to delegate government. In my opinion, the welfare of England, in great measure, depends upon what takes place at the hustings. If, in the majority of instances, there were abject conduct there, electors and elected would be alike debased; upright public men could not be expected to arise from such beginnings; and thoughtful persons would begin to consider whether some other form of government could not forthwith be made out.

Ellesmere. I have a supreme disgust for the man who at the hustings has no opinion beyond or above the clamour round him. How such a fellow would have kissed the ground before a Pompadour, or waited for hours in a Buckingham's antechamber, only to catch the faintest beam of reflected light from royalty.

But I declare we have been just like schoolboys talking about forms of government and so on.

"For forms of government let fools contest, That which is WORST administered is best,"—

that is, representative government.

Milverton. I should not like either of you to fancy, from what I have been saying about representative government, that I do not see the dangers and the evils of it. In fact, it is a frequent thought with me of what importance the House of Lords is at present, and of how much greater importance it might be made. If there were Peers for life, and official members of the House of Commons, it would, I think, meet most of your objections, Dunsford.

Dunsford. I suppose I am becoming a little rusty and disposed to grumble, as I grow old; but there is a good deal in modern government which seems to me very rude and absurd. There comes a clamour, partly reasonable; power is deaf to it, overlooks it, says there is no such thing; then great clamour; after a time, power welcomes that, takes it to its arms, says that now it is loud it is very wise, wishes it had always been clamour itself.

Ellesmere. How many acres do you farm, Dunsford? How spiteful you are!

Dunsford. I am not thinking of Corn Laws alone, as you fancy, Master Ellesmere. But to go to other things. I quite agree, Milverton, with what you were saying just now about the business of the world being carried on by few, and the thinking few being in the nature of gifts to the world, not elicited by King or Kaiser.

Milverton. The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary places.

Ellesmere. Not a bad metaphor, but untrue. Aristotle, Bacon—

Milverton. Well, I believe it would be much wiser to say, that we cannot lay down rules about the highest work; either when it is done, where it will be done, or how it can be made to be done. It is too immaterial for our measurement; for the highest part even of the mere business of the world is in dealing with ideas. It is very amusing to observe the misconceptions of men on these points. They call for what is outward—can understand that, can praise it. Fussiness and the forms of activity in all ages get great praise. Imagine an active, bustling little praetor under Augustus, how he probably pointed out Horace to his sons as a moony kind of man, whose ways were much to be avoided, and told them it was a weakness in Augustus to like such idle men about him instead of men of business.

Ellesmere. Or fancy a bustling Glasgow merchant of Adam Smith's day watching him. How little would the merchant have dreamt what a number of vessels were to be floated away by the ink in the Professor's inkstand; and what crashing of axes, and clearing of forests in distant lands, the noise of his pen upon the paper portended.

Milverton. It is not only the effect of the still-working man that the busy man cannot anticipate, but neither can he comprehend the present labour. If Horace had told my praetor that

"Abstinuit Venere et vino, sudavit et alsit,"

"What, to write a few lines!" would his praetorship have cried out. "Why, I can live well and enjoy life; and I flatter myself no one in Rome does more business."

Dunsford. All of it only goes to show how little we know of each other, and how tolerant we ought to be of others' efforts.

Milverton. The trials that there must be every day without any incident that even the most minute household chronicler could set down: the labours without show or noise!

Ellesmere. The deep things that there are which, with unthinking people, pass for shallow things, merely because they are clear as well as deep. My fable of the other day, for instance—which instead of producing any moral effect upon you two, only seemed to make you both inclined to giggle.

Milverton. I am so glad you reminded me of that. I, too, fired with a noble emulation, have invented a fable since we last met which I want you to hear. I assure you I did not mean to laugh at yours: it was only that it came rather unexpectedly upon me. You are not exactly the person from whom one should expect fables.

Dunsford. Now for the fable.

Milverton. There was a gathering together of creatures hurtful and terrible to man, to name their king. Blight, mildew, darkness, mighty waves, fierce winds, Will-o'-the-wisps, and shadows of grim objects, told fearfully their doings and preferred their claims, none prevailing. But when evening came on, a thin mist curled up, derisively, amidst the assemblage, and said, "I gather round a man going to his own home over paths made by his daily footsteps; and he becomes at once helpless and tame as a child. The lights meant to assist him, then betray. You find him wandering, or need the aid of other Terrors to subdue him. I am, alone, confusion to him." And all the assemblage bowed before the mist, and made it king, and set it on the brow of many a mountain, where, when it is not doing evil, it may be often seen to this day.

Dunsford. Well, I like that fable: only I am not quite clear about the meaning.

Ellesmere. You had no doubt about mine.

Dunsford. Is the mist calumny, Milverton?

Ellesmere. No, prejudice, I am sure.

Dunsford. Familiarity with the things around us, obscuring knowledge?

Milverton. I would rather not explain. Each of you make your own fable of it.

Dunsford. Well, if ever I make a fable, it shall be one of the old- fashioned sort, with animals for the speakers, and a good easy moral.

Ellesmere. Not a thing requiring the notes of seven German metaphysicians. I must go and talk a little to my friends the trees, and see if I can get any explanation from them. It is turning out a beautiful day after all, notwithstanding my praise of its solidity.



CHAPTER VII.



We met as usual at our old spot on the lawn for our next reading. I forget what took place before reading, except that Ellesmere was very jocose about our reading "Fiction" in-doors, and the following "November Essay," as he called it, "under a jovial sun, and with the power of getting up and walking away from each other to any extent."

ON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS.

The "Iliad" for war; the "Odyssey" for wandering; but where is the great domestic epic? Yet it is but commonplace to say, that passions may rage round a tea-table, which would not have misbecome men dashing at one another in war-chariots; and evolutions of patience and temper are performed at the fireside, worthy to be compared with the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; but social martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar.

We may blind ourselves to it if we like, but the hatreds and disgusts that there are behind friendship, relationship, service, and, indeed, proximity of all kinds, is one of the darkest spots upon earth. The various relations of life, which bring people together, cannot, as we know, be perfectly fulfilled except in a state where there will, perhaps, be no occasion for any of them. It is no harm, however, to endeavour to see whether there are any methods which may make these relations in the least degree more harmonious now.

In the first place, if people are to live happily together, they must not fancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their lives have been exactly similar up to the present time, that they started exactly alike, and that they are to be for the future of the same mind. A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton's law is to astronomy. Sometimes men have a knowledge of it with regard to the world in general: they do not expect the outer world to agree with them in all points, but are vexed at not being able to drive their own tastes and opinions into those they live with. Diversities distress them. They will not see that there are many forms of virtue and wisdom. Yet we might as well say, "Why all these stars; why this difference; why not all one star?"

Many of the rules for people living together in peace follow from the above. For instance, not to interfere unreasonably with others, not to ridicule their tastes, not to question and re-question their resolves, not to indulge in perpetual comment on their proceedings, and to delight in their having other pursuits than ours, are all based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact that they are not we.

Another rule for living happily with others is to avoid having stock subjects of disputation. It mostly happens, when people live much together, that they come to have certain set topics, around which, from frequent dispute, there is such a growth of angry words, mortified vanity, and the like, that the original subject of difference becomes a standing subject for quarrel; and there is a tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to it.

Again, if people wish to live well together, they must not hold too much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to married people, when he said, "Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute detail of a domestic day." But the application should be much more general than he made it. There is no time for such reasonings, and nothing that is worth them. And when we recollect how two lawyers, or two politicians, can go on contending, and that there is no end of one-sided reasoning on any subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best mode for arriving at truth. But certainly it is not the way to arrive at good temper.

If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live. The number of people who have taken out judges' patents for themselves is very large in any society. Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism. It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope. But these self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.

One of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded to is that which may be called criticism over the shoulder. "Had I been consulted," "Had you listened to me," "But you always will," and such short scraps of sentences may remind many of us of dissertations which we have suffered and inflicted, and of which we cannot call to mind any soothing effect.

Another rule is, not to let familiarity swallow up all courtesy. Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly, to your associates, but not less courteously than you do to strangers.

Again, we must not expect more from the society of our friends and companions than it can give, and especially must not expect contrary things. It is something arrogant to talk of travelling over other minds (mind being, for what we know, infinite); but still we become familiar with the upper views, tastes, and tempers of our associates. And it is hardly in man to estimate justly what is familiar to him. In travelling along at night, as Hazlitt says, we catch a glimpse into cheerful-looking rooms with light blazing in them, and we conclude involuntarily how happy the inmates must be. Yet there is heaven and hell in those rooms—the same heaven and hell that we have known in others.

There are two great classes of promoters of social happiness— cheerful people, and people who have some reticence. The latter are more secure benefits to society even than the former. They are non- conductors of all the heats and animosities around them. To have peace in a house, or a family, or any social circle, the members of it must beware of passing on hasty and uncharitable speeches, which, the whole of the context seldom being told, is often not conveying but creating mischief. They must be very good people to avoid doing this; for let Human Nature say what it will, it likes sometimes to look on at a quarrel, and that not altogether from ill-nature, but from a love of excitement, for the same reason that Charles II. liked to attend the debates in the Lords, because they were "as good as a play."

We come now to the consideration of temper, which might have been expected to be treated first. But to cut off the means and causes of bad temper is, perhaps, of as much importance as any direct dealing with the temper itself. Besides, it is probable that in small social circles there is more suffering from unkindness than ill-temper. Anger is a thing that those who live under us suffer more from than those who live with us. But all the forms of ill- humour and sour-sensitiveness, which especially belong to equal intimacy (though indeed, they are common to all), are best to be met by impassiveness. When two sensitive persons are shut up together, they go on vexing each other with a reproductive irritability. {93} But sensitive and hard people get on well together. The supply of temper is not altogether out of the usual laws of supply and demand.

Intimate friends and relations should be careful when they go out into the world together, or admit others to their own circle, that they do not make a bad use of the knowledge which they have gained of each other by their intimacy. Nothing is more common than this, and did it not mostly proceed from mere carelessness, it would be superlatively ungenerous. You seldom need wait for the written life of a man to hear about his weaknesses, or what are supposed to be such, if you know his intimate friends, or meet him in company with them.

Lastly, in conciliating those we live with, it is most surely done, not by consulting their interests, nor by giving way to their opinions, so much as by not offending their tastes. The most refined part of us lies in this region of taste, which is perhaps a result of our whole being rather than a part of our nature, and, at any rate, is the region of our most subtle sympathies and antipathies.

It may be said that if the great principles of Christianity were attended to, all such rules, suggestions, and observations as the above would be needless. True enough! Great principles are at the bottom of all things; but to apply them to daily life, many little rules, precautions, and insights are needed. Such things hold a middle place between real life and principles, as form does between matter and spirit, moulding the one and expressing the other.

——-

Ellesmere. Quite right that last part. Everybody must have known really good people, with all Christian temper, but having so little Christian prudence as to do a great deal of mischief in society.

Dunsford. There is one case, my dear Milverton, which I do not think you have considered: the case where people live unhappily together, not from any bad relations between them, but because they do not agree about the treatment of others. A just person, for instance, who would bear anything for himself or herself, must remonstrate, at the hazard of any disagreement, at injustice to others.

Milverton. Yes. That, however, is a case to be decided upon higher considerations than those I have been treating of. A man must do his duty in the way of preventing injustice, and take what comes of it.

Ellesmere. For people to live happily together, the real secret is that they should not live too much together. Of course, you cannot say that; it would sound harsh, and cut short the essay altogether.

Again, you talk about tastes and "region of subtle sympathies," and all that. I have observed that if people's vanity is pleased, they live well enough together. Offended vanity is the great separator. You hear a man (call him B) saying that he is really not himself before So-and-so; tell him that So-and-so admires him very much and is himself rather abashed before B, and B is straightway comfortable, and they get on harmoniously together, and you hear no more about subtle sympathies or antipathies.

Dunsford. What a low view you do take of things sometimes, Ellesmere!

Milverton. I should not care how low it was, but it is not fair—at least, it does not contain the whole matter. In the very case he has put, there was a subtle embarrassment between B and So-and-so. Well, now, let these people not merely meet occasionally, but be obliged to live together, without any such explanation as Ellesmere has imagined, and they will be very uncomfortable from causes that you cannot impute to vanity. It takes away much of the savour of life to live amongst those with whom one has not anything like one's fair value. It may not be mortified vanity, but unsatisfied sympathy, which causes this discomfort. B thinks that the other does not know him; he feels that he has no place with the other. When there is intense admiration on one side, there is hardly a care in the mind of the admiring one as to what estimation he is held in. But, in ordinary cases, some clearly defined respect and acknowledgment of worth is needed on both sides. See how happy a man is in any office or service who is acknowledged to do something well. How comfortable he is with his superiors! He has his place. It is not exactly a satisfaction of his vanity, but an acknowledgment of his useful existence that contents him. I do not mean to say that there are not innumerable claims for acknowledgment of merit and service made by rampant vanity and egotism, which claims cannot be satisfied, ought not to be satisfied, and which, being unsatisfied, embitter people. But I think your word Vanity will not explain all the feelings we have been talking about.

Ellesmere. Perhaps not.

Dunsford. Certainly not.

Ellesmere. Well, at any rate, you will admit that there is a class of dreadfully humble people who make immense claims at the very time that they are explaining that they have no claims. They say they know they cannot be esteemed; they are well aware that they are not wanted, and so on, all the while making it a sort of grievance and a claim that they are not what they know themselves not to be; whereas, if they did but fall back upon their humility, and keep themselves quiet about their demerits, they would be strong then, and in their place and happy, doing what they could.

Milverton. It must be confessed that these people do make their humility somewhat obnoxious. Yet, after all, you allow that they know their deficiencies, and they only say, "I know I have not much to recommend me, but I wish to be loved, nevertheless."

Ellesmere. Ah, if they only said it a few times! Besides, there is a little envy mixed up with the humility that I mean.

Dunsford. Travelling is a great trial of people's ability to live together.

Ellesmere. Yes. Lavater says that you do not know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him; but I think a long journey with him will do.

Milverton. Well, and what is it in travelling that makes people disagree? Not direct selfishness, but injudicious management; stupid regrets, for instance, at things not being different from what they are, or from what they might have been, if "the other route" had been chosen; fellow-travellers punishing each other with each other's tastes; getting stock subjects of disputation; laughing unseasonably at each other's vexations and discomforts; and endeavouring to settle everything by the force of sufficient reason, instead of by some authorised will, or by tossing up. Thus, in the short time of a journey, almost all modes and causes of human disagreement are brought into action.

Ellesmere. My favourite one not being the least—over-much of each other's company.

For my part, I think one of the greatest bores of companionship is, not merely that people wish to fit tastes and notions on you just as they might the first pair of ready-made shoes they meet with, a process amusing enough to the bystander, but exquisitely uncomfortable to the person being ready-shod: but that they bore you with never-ending talk about their pursuits, even when they know that you do not work in the same groove with them, and that they cannot hope to make you do so.

Dunsford. Nobody can accuse you of that fault, Ellesmere: I never heard you dilate much upon anything that interested you, though I have known you have some pet subject, and to be working at it for months. But this comes of your coldness of nature.

Ellesmere. Well, it might bear a more favourable construction. But to go back to the essay. It only contemplates the fact of people living together as equals, if we may so say; but in general, of course, you must add some other relationship or connection than that of merely being together.

Milverton. I had not overlooked that; but there are certain general rules in the matter that may be applied to nearly all relationship, just as I have taken that one from Johnson, applied by him to married life, about not endeavouring to settle all things by reasoning, and have given it a general application which, I believe, it will bear.

Ellesmere. There is one thing that I should think must often make women very unreasonable and unpleasant companions. Oh, you may both hold up your hands and eyes, but I am not married, and can say what I please. Of course you put on the proper official look of astonishment; and I will duly report it. But I was going to say that Chivalry, which has doubtless done a great deal of good, has also done a great deal of harm. Women may talk the greatest unreason out of doors, and nobody kindly informs them that it is unreason. They do not talk much before clever men, and when they do, their words are humoured and dandled as children's sayings are. Now, I should fancy—mind, I do not want either of you to say that my fancy is otherwise than quite unreasonable—I should fancy that when women have to hear reason at home it must sound odd to them. The truth is, you know, we cannot pet anything much without doing it mischief. You cannot pet the intellect, any more than the will, without injuring it. Well then, again, if you put people upon a pedestal and do a great deal of worship around them, I cannot think but the will in such cases must become rather corrupted, and that lessons of obedience must fall rather harshly—

Dunsford. Why, you Mahometan, you Turk of a lawyer—would you do away with all the high things of courtesy, tenderness for the weaker, and—

Milverton. No, I see what he means; and there is something in it. Many a woman is brought up in unreason and self-will from these causes that he has given, as many a man from other causes; but there is one great corrective that he has omitted, and which is, that all forms, fashions, and outward things have a tendency to go down before realities when they come hand to hand together. Knowledge and judgment prevail. Governing is apt to fall to the right person in private as in public affairs.

Ellesmere. Those who give way in public affairs, and let the men who can do a thing do it, are so far wise that they know what is to be done, mostly. But the very things I am arguing against are the unreason and self-will, which being constantly pampered, do not appreciate reason or just sway. Besides, is there not a force in ill-humour and unreason to which you constantly see the wisest bend? You will come round to my opinion some day. I do not want, though, to convince you. It is no business of mine.

Milverton. Well, I may be wrong, but I think, when we come to consider education, I can show you how the dangers you fear may be greatly obviated, without Chivalry being obliged to put on a wig and gown, and be wise.

Dunsford. Meanwhile, let us enjoy the delightful atmosphere of courtesy, unreasonable sometimes, if you like, which saves many people being put down with the best arguments in the most convincing manner, or being weighed, estimated, and given way to, so as not to spoil them.

Ellesmere. Do not tell, either of you, what I have been saying. I shall always be poked up into some garret when I come to see you, if you do.

Dunsford. I think the most curious thing, as regards people living together, is the intense ignorance they sometimes are in of each other. Many years ago, one or other of you said something of this kind to me, and I have often thought of it since.

Milverton. People fulfil a relation towards each other, and they only know each other in that relation, especially if it is badly managed by the superior one; but any way the relationship involves some ignorance. They perform orbits round each other, each gyrating, too, upon his own axis, and there are parts of the character of each which are never brought into view of the other.

Ellesmere. I should carry this notion of yours, Milverton, farther than you do. There is a peculiar mental relation soon constituted between associates of any kind, which confines and prevents complete knowledge on both sides. Each man, in some measure therefore, knows others only through himself. Tennyson makes Ulysses say,

"I am a part of all that I have seen;"

it might have run,

"I am a part of all that I have heard."

Dunsford. Ellesmere becoming metaphysical and transcendental!

Ellesmere. Well, well, we will leave these heights, and descend in little drops of criticism. There are two or three things you might have pointed out, Milverton. Perhaps you would say that they are included in what you have said, but I think not. You talk of the mischief of much comment on each other amongst those who live together. You might have shown, I think, that in the case of near friends and relations this comment also deepens into interference— at least it partakes of that nature. Friends and relations should, therefore, be especially careful to avoid needless comments on each other. They do just the contrary. That is one of the reasons why they often hate one another so much.

Dunsford. Ellesmere!

Ellesmere. Protest, if you like, my dear Dunsford. Dissentient, 1. Because I wish it were not so. 2. Because I am sorry that it is. (Signed) DUNSFORD.

Milverton. "Hate" is too strong a word, Ellesmere; what you say would be true enough, if you would put "are not in sympathy with."

Ellesmere. "Have a quiet distaste for." That is the proper medium. Now, to go to another matter. You have not put the case of over- managing people, who are tremendous to live with.

Milverton. I have spoken about "interfering unreasonably with others."

Ellesmere. That does not quite convey what I mean. It is when the manager and the managee are both of the same mind as to the thing to be done; but the former insists, and instructs, and suggests, and foresees, till the other feels that all free agency for him is gone.

Milverton. It is a sad thing to consider how much of their abilities people turn to tiresomeness. You see a man who would be very agreeable if he were not so observant: another who would be charming, if he were deaf and dumb: a third delightful, if he did not vex all around him with superfluous criticism.

Ellesmere. A hit at me that last, I suspect. But I shall go on. You have not, I think, made enough merit of independence in companionship. If I were to put into an aphorism what I mean, I should say, Those who depend wholly on companionship are the worst companions; or thus: Those deserve companionship who can do without it. There, Mr. Aphoriser General, what do you say to that?

Milverton. Very good, but—

Ellesmere. Of course a "but" to other people's aphorisms, as if every aphorism had not buts innumerable. We critics, you know, cannot abide criticism. We do all the criticism that is needed ourselves. I wonder at the presumption sometimes of you wretched authors. But to proceed. You have not said anything about the mischief of superfluous condolence amongst people who live together. I flatter myself that I could condole anybody out of all peace of mind.

Milverton. All depends upon whether condolence goes with the grain, or against the grain, of vanity. I know what you mean, however: For instance, it is a very absurd thing to fret much over other people's courses, not considering the knowledge and discipline that there is in any course that a man may take. And it is still more absurd to be constantly showing the people fretted over that you are fretting over them. I think a good deal of what you call superfluous condolence would come under the head of superfluous criticism.

Ellesmere. Not altogether. In companionship, when an evil happens to one of the circle, the others should simply attempt to share and lighten it, not to expound it, or dilate on it, or make it the least darker. The person afflicted generally apprehends all the blackness sufficiently. Now, unjust abuse by the world is to me like the howling of the wind at night when one is warm within. Bring any draught of it into one's house though, and it is not so pleasant.

Dunsford. Talking of companionship, do not you think there is often a peculiar feeling of home where age or infirmity is? The arm-chair of the sick or the old is the centre of the house. They think, perhaps, that they are unimportant; but all the household hopes and cares flow to them and from them.

Milverton. I quite agree with you. What you have just depicted is a beautiful sight, especially when, as you often see, the age or infirmity is not in the least selfish or exacting.

Ellesmere. We have said a great deal about the companionship of human beings; but, upon my word, we ought to have kept a few words for our dog friends. Rollo has been lolling out his great tongue, and looking wistfully from face to face, as we each began our talk. A few minutes ago he was quite concerned, thinking I was angry with you, when I would not let you "but" my aphorism. I am not sure which of the three I should rather go out walking with now: Dunsford, Rollo, Milverton. The middle one is the safest companion. I am sure not to get out of humour with him. But I have no objection to try the whole three: only I vote for much continuity of silence, as we have had floods of discussion to-day.

Dunsford. Agreed!

Ellesmere. Come, Rollo, you may bark now, as you have been silent, like a wise dog, all the morning.



CHAPTER VIII.



It was arranged, during our walk, that Ellesmere should come and stay a day or two with me, and see the neighbouring cathedral, which is nearer my house than Milverton's. The visit over, I brought him back to Worth-Ashton. Milverton saw us coming, walked down the hill to meet us, and after the usual greetings, began to talk to Ellesmere.

Milverton. So you have been to see our cathedral. I say "our," for when a cathedral is within ten miles of us, we feel a property in it, and are ready to battle for its architectural merits.

Ellesmere. You know I am not a man to rave about cathedrals.

Milverton. I certainly do not expect you to do so. To me a cathedral is mostly somewhat of a sad sight. You have Grecian monuments, if anything so misplaced can be called Grecian, imbedded against and cutting into Gothic pillars; the doors shut for the greater part of the day; only a little bit of the building used: beadledom predominant; the clink of money here and there; white-wash in vigour; the singing indifferent; the sermons not indifferent but bad; and some visitors from London forming, perhaps, the most important part of the audience; in fact, the thing having become a show. We look about, thinking when piety filled every corner, and feel that the cathedral is too big for the Religion which is a dried-up thing that rattles in this empty space.

Ellesmere. This is the boldest simile I have heard for a long time. My theory about cathedrals is very different, I must confess.

Dunsford. Theory!

Ellesmere. Well, "theory" is not the word I ought to have used— feeling then. My feeling is, how strong this creature was, this worship, how beautiful, how alluring, how complete; but there was something stronger—truth.

Milverton. And more beautiful?

Ellesmere. Yes, and far more beautiful.

Milverton. Doubtless, to the free spirits who brought truth forward.

Ellesmere. You are only saying this, Milverton, to try what I will say; but, despite of all sentimentalities, you sympathise with any emancipation of the human mind, as I do, however much the meagreness of Protestantism may be at times distasteful to you.

Milverton. I did not say I was anxious to go back. Certainly not. But what says Dunsford? Let us sit down on his stile and hear what he has to say.

Dunsford. I cannot talk to you about this subject. If I tell you of all the merits (as they seem to me) of the Church of England, you will both pick what I say to pieces, whereas if I leave you to fight on, one or the other will avail himself of those arguments on which our Church is based.

Milverton. Well, Dunsford, you are very candid, and would make a complete diplomatist: truth-telling being now pronounced (rather late in the day) the very acme of diplomacy. But do you not own that our cathedrals are sadly misused?

Dunsford. Now, very likely, if more were made of them, you, and men who think like you, would begin to cry out "superstition"; and would instantly turn round and inveigh against the uses which you now, perhaps, imagine for cathedrals.

Milverton. Well, one never can answer for oneself; but at any rate, I do not see what is the meaning of building new churches in neighbourhoods where there are already the noblest buildings suitable for the same purposes. Is there a church religion, and is there a cathedral religion?

Ellesmere. You cannot make the present fill the garb of the past, Milverton, any more than you could make the past fill that of the present. Now, as regards the very thing you are about to discuss to-day, if it be the same you told us in our last walk—Education: if you are only going to give us some institution for it, I daresay it may be very good for to-day, or for this generation, but it will have its sere and yellow leaf, and there will be a time when future Milvertons, in sentimental mood, will moan over it, and wish they had it and all that has grown up to take its place at the same time. But all this is what I have often heard you say yourself in other words.

Dunsford. This is very hard doctrine, and not quite sound, I think. In getting the new gain, we always sacrifice something, and we should look with some pious regard to what was good in the things which are past. That good is generally one which, though it may not be equal to the present, would make a most valuable supplement to it.

Milverton. I would try and work in the old good thing with the new, not as patchwork though, but making the new thing grow out in such a way as to embrace the old advantage.

Ellesmere. Well, we must have the essay before we branch out into our philosophy. Pleasure afterwards—I will not say what comes first.

EDUCATION.

The word education is so large, that one may almost as well put "world," or "the end and object of being," at the head of an essay. It should, therefore, soon be declared what such a heading does mean. The word education suggests chiefly to some minds what the State can do for those whom they consider its young people—the children of the poorer classes: to others it presents the idea of all the training that can be got for money at schools and colleges, and which can be fairly accomplished and shut in at the age of one- and-twenty. This essay, however, will not be a treatise on government education, or other school and college education, but will only contain a few points in reference to the general subject, which may escape more methodical and enlarged discussions.

In the first place, as regards government education, it must be kept in mind that there is a danger of its being too interfering and formal, of its overlying private enterprise, insisting upon too much uniformity, and injuring local connections and regards. Education, even in the poorest acceptance of the word, is a great thing: but the harmonious intercourse of different ranks, if not a greater, is a more difficult one; and we must not gain the former at any considerable sacrifice of the latter.

There is another point connected with this branch of the subject which requires, perhaps, to be noted. If government provision is made in any case, might it not be combined with private payment in other cases, or enter in the way of rewards, so as to do good throughout each step of the social ladder? The lowest kind of school education is a power, and it is desirable that the gradations of this power should correspond to other influences which we know to be good. For instance, a hard-working man saves something to educate his children; if he can get a little better education for them than other parents of his own rank for theirs, it is an incentive and a reward to him, and the child's bringing up at home is a thing which will correspond to this better education at school. In this there are the elements at once of stability and progress.

These views may possibly seem too refined, but at any rate they require consideration.

The next branch of the subject is the ordinary education of young persons not of the poorest classes, with which the State has hitherto had little or nothing to do. This may be considered under four heads: religious, moral, intellectual, and physical education. With regard to the first, there is not much that can be put into rules about it. Parents and tutors will naturally be anxious to impress those under their charge with the religious opinions which they themselves hold. In doing this, however, they should not omit to lay a foundation for charity towards people of other religious opinions. For this purpose, it may be requisite to give a child a notion that there are other creeds besides that in which it is brought up itself. And especially, let it not suppose that all good and wise people are of its church or chapel. However desirable it may appear to the person teaching that there should be such a thing as unity of religion, yet as the facts of the world are against his wishes, and as this is the world which the child is to enter, it is well that the child should in reasonable time be informed of these facts. It may be said in reply that history sufficiently informs children on these points. But the world of the young is the domestic circle; all beyond is fabulous, unless brought home to them by comment. The fact, therefore, of different opinions in religious matters being held by good people should sometimes be dwelt upon, instead of being shunned, if we would secure a ground-work of tolerance in a child's mind.

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.

In the intellectual part of education there is the absolute knowledge to be acquired, and the ways of acquiring knowledge to be gained. The latter of course form the most important branch. They can, in some measure, be taught. Give children little to do, make much of its being accurately done. This will give accuracy. Insist upon speed in learning, with careful reference to the original powers of the pupil. This speed gives the habit of concentrating attention, one of the most valuable of mental habits. Then cultivate logic. Logic is not the hard matter that is fancied. A young person, especially after a little geometrical training, may soon be taught to perceive where a fallacy exists, and whether an argument is well sustained. It is not, however, sufficient for him to be able to examine sharply and to pull to pieces. He must learn how to build. This is done by method. The higher branches of method cannot be taught at first. But you may begin by teaching orderliness of mind. Collecting, classifying, contrasting and weighing facts, are some of the processes by which method is taught. When these four things, accuracy, attention, logic, and method are attained, the intellect is fairly furnished with its instruments.

As regards the things to be taught, they will vary to some extent in each age. The general course of education pursued at any particular time may not be the wisest by any means, and greatness will overleap it and neglect it, but the mass of men may go more safely and comfortably, if not with the stream, at least by the side of it.

In the choice of studies too much deference should not be paid to the bent of a young person's mind. Excellence in one or two things which may have taken the fancy of a youth (or which really may suit his genius) will ill compensate for a complete ignorance of those branches of study which are very repugnant to him; and which are, therefore, not likely to be learnt when he has freedom in the choice of his studies.

Amongst the first things to be aimed at in the intellectual part of education is variety of pursuit. A human being, like a tree, if it is to attain to perfect symmetry, must have light and air given to it from all quarters. This may be done without making men superficial. Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt. But one or two great branches of science must be accurately known. So, too, the choice works of antiquity may be thoroughly appreciated without extensive reacting. And passing on from mere learning of any kind, a variety of pursuits, even in what may be called accomplishments, is eminently serviceable. Much may be said of the advantage of keeping a man to a few pursuits, and of the great things done thereby in the making of pins and needles. But in this matter we are not thinking of the things that are to be done, but of the persons who are to do them. Not wealth but men. A number of one-sided men may make a great nation, though I much incline to doubt that; but such a nation will not contain a number of great men.

The very advantage that flows from division of labour, and the probable consequences that men's future bread-getting pursuits will be more and more sub-divided, and therefore limited, make it the more necessary that a man should begin life with a broad basis of interest in many things which may cultivate his faculties and develop his nature. This multifariousness of pursuit is needed also in the education of the poor. Civilisation has made it easy for a man to brutalise himself: how is this to be counteracted but by endowing him with many pursuits which may distract him from vice? It is not that kind of education which leads to no employment in after-life that will do battle with vice. But when education enlarges the field of life-long good pursuits, it becomes formidable to the soul's worst enemies.

MORAL EDUCATION.

In considering moral education we must recollect that there are three agents in this matter—the child himself, the influence of his grown-up friends, and that of his contemporaries. All that his grown-up friends tell him in the way of experience goes for very little, except in palpable matters. They talk of abstractions which he cannot comprehend: and the "Arabian Nights" is a truer world to him than that they talk of. Still, though they cannot furnish experience, they can give motives. Indeed, in their daily intercourse with the child, they are always doing so. For instance, truth, courage, and kindness are the great moral qualities to be instilled. Take courage, in its highest form—moral courage. If a child perpetually hears such phrases (and especially if they are applied to his own conduct), as, "What people will say," "How they will look at you," "What they will think," and the like, it tends to destroy all just self-reliance in that child's mind, and to set up instead an exaggerated notion of public opinion, the greatest tyrant of these times. People can see this in such an obvious thing as animal courage. They will avoid over-cautioning children against physical dangers, knowing that the danger they talk much about will become a bug-bear to the child which it may never get rid of. But a similar peril lurks in the application of moral motives. Truth, courage, and kindness are likely to be learnt, or not, by children, according as they hear and receive encouragement in the direction of these pre-eminent qualities. When attempt is made to frighten a child with these worldly maxims, "What will be said of you?" "Are you like such a one?" and such things, it is meant to draw him under the rule of grown-up respectability. The last thing thought of by the parent or teacher is, that such maxims will bring the child under the especial guidance of the most unscrupulous of his contemporaries. They will use ridicule and appeal to their little world, which will be his world, and ask, "What will be said" of him. There should be some stuff in him of his own to meet these awful generalities.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

The physical education of children is a very simple matter, too simple to be much attended to without great perseverance and resolution on the part of those who care for the children. It consists, as we all know, in good air, simple diet, sufficient exercise, and judicious clothing. The first requisite is the most important, and by far the most frequently neglected. This neglect is not so unreasonable as it seems. It arises from pure ignorance. If the mass of mankind knew what scientific men know about the functions of the air, they would be as careful in getting a good supply of it as of their other food. All the people that ever were supposed to die of poison in the middle ages, and that means nearly everybody whose death was worth speculating about, are not so many as those who die poisoned by bad air in the course of any given year. Even a slightly noxious thing, which is constant, affecting us every moment of the day, must have considerable influence; but the air we breathe is not a thing that slightly affects us, but one of the most important elements of life. Moreover, children are the most affected by impurity of air. We need not weary ourselves with much statistics to ascertain this. One or two broad facts will assure us of it. In Nottingham there is a district called Byron Ward, "the densest and worst-conditioned quarter of the town." A table has been made by Mr. William Hawksley of the mortality of equal populations in different parts of the town:

"On comparing the diagram No. 1, relating to Park Ward, with the diagram No. 7, relating to Byron Ward, it will be seen that the heavier pressure of the causes of mortality occasions in the latter district such an undue destruction of early life, that towards 100 deaths, however occurring, Byron Ward contributes fifty per cent. more of children under five years of age than the Park Ward, for the former sends sixty children to an early grave, while the latter sends only forty." {116a}

Mr. Hawksley, the former witness alluded to, goes on to say—

"It has been long known that, with increase of years, up to that period of life which has been denominated the second childhood, the human constitution becomes gradually more resistful, and as it were slowly hardened against the repeated attacks of those more acute disorders, incident to an inferior degree of sanitary civilisation, by which large portions of an infant population are continually overcome and rapidly swept away. From the operation of these and more extraneous influences of a disturbing character, an infant population is almost entirely exempted; and on this account it is considered that an infant population constitutes, as it were, a delicate barometer, from which we may derive more early and more certain indications of the presence and comparative force of local causes of mortality and disease than can be obtained from the more general methods of investigation usually pursued."

The above evidence is confirmed by Mr. Toynbee: —

"The disease of hydrocephalus, of water in the brain, so fatal to children, I find associated with symptoms of scrofula, and arising in abundance in these close rooms. I believe water in the brain, in the class of patients whom I visit, to be almost wholly a scrofulous affection." {116b}

But supposing people aware of the necessity for good air, and therefore for ventilation, what is to be done? In houses in great towns certainly, and I should say in all houses, some of the care and expense that are devoted to ornamental work, which when done is often a care, a trouble, an eyesore, and a mischief, should be given to modes of ventilation, {117a} sound building, abundant access of light, largeness of sleeping-rooms, and such useful things. Less ormolu and tinsel of all kinds in the drawing-rooms, and sweeter air in the regions above. Similar things may be done for and by the poor. {117b} And it need hardly be said that those people who care for their children, if of any enlightenment at all, will care greatly for the sanitary condition of their neighbourhood generally. At present you will find at many a rich man's door {117c} a nuisance which is poisoning the atmosphere that his children are to breathe, but which he could entirely cure for less than one day's ordinary expenses.