| | | | | IT is fortunate for the mass of mankind that their time is pretty well | laid out for them. They are spared the problem which must constantly | vex the souls of men ~~ busy men, not impelled by sheer necessity ~~ | what is to come of their work, and why they do it. The man who | ploughs or carpenters sees a satisfactory fruit of his labours. He knows | that the world could not get on without him, that he, as one of a class, | is perfectly indispensable to the wellbeing, the existence even, of | mankind. That we must work, and that, because we must, something | useful will be provided for us to do, every believer in a Providence | cannot but assume. But people who idolise work of their own | devising, a common form of worship. in our time, are inevitably | subject to self-delusions. Very few men who work with their brains, | who invent work of any kind for themselves, can, in fact, be as sure | that they are benefiting their species as the man who weaves or digs. | Many | | authors unquestionably are serving their generation, many | philanthropists, many preachers, many philosophers, many ~~ let us | say ~~ essayists and critics; but the mere dignity of the sphere and the | conviction of utility, though self-sustaining, do not of themselves | prove it. In fact, the higher the aim, the less confident should men be | of the result. We are commanded to work, work is an instinct, and | head-work in a certain sense is a higher form of work than hand-work; | and the individual plods on, trusting to these general truths. But except | where there is an abiding afflatus ~~ an outpouring which a man must | utter or die ~~ except a man is habitually "overflowing as the moon at | the full," it may almost be doubted whether literary work could be | carried on by modest men without the common tie which makes all | labourers one brotherhood, that they earn money by it. Money is | something positive, a reason for exertion apart from the sense of the | value of your work. Your work may not be good, even in your own | eyes; it may not teach or prove, or edify or amuse; but the idea of | wages reduces the pen to the instrument of an honest trade, and the | wielder of it to the condition of an honest labourer. He is not | oppressed by the humbling sense of shame or failure, by the sore | misgiving that he is spinning worthless cobwebs out of his own vitals, | only for the remorseless housewife Oblivion to sweep away; for if he | does not serve society, it serves him. Something comes of the | transaction; which cannot always be said of the mere fancy work done | for honour and glory, or even for the gratuitous | | benefit of the human species. We believe the world of writers, on | whom men rely for their daily supply of teaching and amusement, | would be "utterly consumed by sharp distress" at the emptiness and | vanity of their work, but for the sedative and consoling reflection that | they are day-labourers, and write for their hire, and therefore may | flatter themselves, by analogy with their brethren of the plough and | loom, that what is fairly paid for is worth having, and that what is | worth paying for must have some intrinsic worth. If there is a fallacy, | it is decently hid. Under it the husbandry of the brain is still carried | on, and a precarious crop harvested. | | We doubt whether work should be so very delightful to the worker as | it seems to be to some people. A little enthusiasm now and then | carries him pleasantly forward, and habit makes it bearable and | comparatively easy. But for the brow to sweat is not in the nature of | things agreeable, though we feel the better for it, perhaps, when it is | cool again. Whenever the mere process of work becomes a man's | highest pleasure we suspect something wrong, some deficiency. He | ought to be glad when it is over. He ought not to undertake it but with | some feeling of necessity, ~~ something impelling him slightly | against the grain. Liberty ought to seem greater and better than | compulsion, even deliberate self-compulsion. Whenever people set | their heads to constant work we may be perfectly certain that they are | losing more than they gain, that they are sinking in the scale at once of | meditative and social beings, | | and that the world profits not at all by the overplus of activity. | | Perhaps excessive activity and laboriousness is not a very common | form of self-mismanagement, but still the work of the world is not | done with a wise economy. Some do not work at all ~~ are utterly | lazy. Some do their share grudgingly and unwillingly without giving it | their energies; and some are always grinding. They are possessed with | the idea that work is virtue and achievement, and renovation and life; | that every time they sit still and fold their hands, the wheels of the | universe drag heavily, that there is a stop, that mischief and decay are | intervening somewhere, and that, till they move again, all nature is out | of joint. It is a cheerful notion, no doubt, that we are necessary to the | wellbeing and harmony of things, if this conviction goes along with | the persuasion that the sort of work we turn out is commensurate with | the mighty need: and work has, no doubt ~~ a man's own work, if he | keeps his mind pretty exclusively upon it ~~ the power of magnifying | itself. Very few people indeed can embrace the idea that they are of no | use; even their existence implies to most people the necessity for their | existence; but the busy man, mixed up in all sorts of affairs, with a | finger in every pie, and always comparing his brisk indefatigableness | with the indolence of colleagues, or the sloth which does not even | undertake labour, comes inevitably to put a high value on what he | does, and to think it essential and necessary. | | Yet, really, an immense proportion of labour of this | | sort must be superfluous. Only a percentage, to speak in mercantile | phrase, can reach the case. There is boundless waste in mere | unassisted intellectual industry. We must work trusting that some one | of the thousand seeds we sow will take root; and often good comes | where we least rely on it. But we suspect human nature is not strong | enough to bear the sense of failure which would be felt if the actual | fruit of our exertions, the miserable gleanings of so much promise, | were revealed to us; if all that came, for instance, of one busy day's | speeches, meetings, lectures, books, articles, hurryings to and fro, | runnings hither and thither, all that makes such mighty stir in the | doing, were set before us. We admit that ignorance is probably bliss in | this case, and we will not pursue the subject; for after all if the busy | workers do comparatively little good, the lazy do none, and ruin | themselves into the bargain. But such considerations, while they ought | not to interfere with work as a duty, may check it as a monomania. | The man who has no time for his friends, who has to apportion his day | into fragments which fit into one another like a Chinese puzzle, whose | whole scheme is disturbed by a moment's interruption, who suffers | under every accidental hindrance, who hurries from one engagement | to another, who at every compulsory check or failure feels himself | wasting and looks out for something to fill the gap, will perhaps do | well now and then to ask what is the good of it all ? and who would be | the loser if he condescended to a little relaxation? If, in the unwilling | holiday, he discovers that he has lost the | | power of enjoyment, that his social instincts have failed him, that free | thought has dwindled, that a thousand interests are lost to him because | he can only care where self is bustling and moiling and feeling itself | important, then the check will have taught him a useful lesson. No | man can be always busy without being slavishly busy. | Bacon tells us, | | But if indeed he is so involved that relaxation | is unattainable, then he may rely on it that society is treating him | shabbily, employing him as its dependant on routine work, trusting to | fresher minds, to men capable of leisure, its more responsible errands, | and reserving for them its real gratitude and rewards. While he thinks | himself a martyr to its service, it considers the favours really on its | own side. It is humouring a propensity and furnishing employment for | a blind instinct, and when he looks for any return he will find | disappointment, and hear himself put off with the old retort ~~ "No | thanks to him; if he had no business he would have nothing to do." | | Our remarks of course do not apply to men of business as such. Few | men who apply themselves strictly to their own calling are | overworked in the way we mean. There is always a propensity to take | things easily where the idea of supererogation is wanting; and | | the man who prides himself on never passing westward of Temple | Bar, and who is set up as a model tradesman, a pattern of clockwork | punctuality and concentrated energies, will be found to spend a good | many hours of every day in mere gossip and newspaper reading. For, | in fact, men's capacity for labour is limited, if by labour we mean an | intelligent application of the powers to any work in hand. It is an | exercise of patience on this account to watch the progress of skilled | labour of any sort. The bricklayer, the gardener, the mechanic are so | deliberate in every movement ~~ each act is so surrounded and | saturated, as it were, in waiting and leisure ~~ that the observer longs | to snatch the tool out of their hands and do the job for them; and very | likely he could do it in half the time; but after the exertion he would | rest on his laurels. The day-labourer, who has ten or twelve hours of it, | only takes his repose in minute, inglorious instalments. People who | contend too resolutely against this natural drag on progress, who will | work faster than the speed to which their capabilities limit them, | defeat their own ends. They are borne along by mere senseless | impetus, and their work either remains a defect and a hindrance, or has | to be undone and retraced. | | We suspect that our age is particularly prolific of this sort of busy | men, as supplying a wide field for them from the great increase of | public business and joint exertion. Where men once worked solitarily | in their closets in personal effort, they now work in committees, | boards, and other associations, thus reversing | | the old arrangement, which was to labour alone, and to enjoy leisure | in company. It must be owned people had then but a narrow | acceptation of the word "neighbour;" it was every man for himself and | his friend, not for himself and the wide world. But the effect of this | limitation rendered it impossible for any given man to have so many | irons in the fire as the active temperament finds room for now; and so | the workers, as well as the wits, had a jolly time of it. They were idle | men after two or three o'clock of the day ~~ the previous hours, well | applied, serving for most men's private affairs ~~ and they supped | nightly in company. If people were to return to this sort of life now, | we should expect a universal collapse. That things went on at all, nay, | that there was actual progress an the while, is a proof that the seething | excitement of apparent work in our own day is not all productive, that | a great deal of it simply supplies employment ~~ in fact, is working in | a circle. And this brings us to our real ground of quarrel with the over- | busy habit of mind, which is, that it not only spoils a man for society, | but stops all real progress and cultivation of his own mind. It | imprisons him in himself, and shuts him out from a whole range of | good and happy influences; and this not because he works, but | because exclusive devotion to his own efforts makes him set an undue | value upon them and upon himself. The position is a false and | mistaken one. | | | and yet this is inevitably the attitude of one who prefers his own work | to intercourse with others, and who thinks he must impart all and can | receive nothing. His whole demeanour shows it. His bustle is a | constant reproof, his uniform plea of want of time a standing insult. | | We pity men who, while esteeming themselves the benefactors and | regenerators of their species, awake a certain resentment above and | beyond that inevitable consequence of self-estimation, being thought | bores. And this feeling of society will seem to them all the harder and | more unthankful, in that it certainly likes busy women. A certain fuss | of occupation fits in with their place and nature. Their work looks | natural, and has never a touch of reproof in it, which man's fussiness | always has. A man cannot be busy without a certain ostentation; but a | woman may be in a little commotion from morning till night, occupied | with her needle, with her household, her studies, her | accomplishments, even with her schools and amongst her poor; and | instead of exciting our spleen, if she manage well, we feel, as it were, | sleeping partners in her labours, and by some mysterious soothing | process to have a share in the merit of them. But a busy woman who is | always otherwise engaged when she is wanted ~~ who keeps her | husband waiting for dinner ~~ who talks with solemn prolixity of her | schemes and doings, how she labours, how much depends upon her ~~ | who delights in being overdriven ~~ who describes herself as in a | turmoil of business, and is for ever parading her own hobbies ~~ | | is perhaps the greater bore of the two, for she is the greater | contradiction to the ideal woman, as being uncomfortable and | irritating. She is worrying where worry is least looked for, and is | therefore the greater hardship. But there are not many such women. | They figure in books rather than in actual life; and so much is | occupation congenial to women, that even this is better than doing | nothing. Society does not assume for them that background of hard | work which gives to men's social idleness the pretence of relaxation; | and thus listlessness, inactivity, and folding of the hands in women is | a painful anomaly to their idlest male friends, and acts upon them like | a cold hearth or lukewarm coffee. In fact, it is unpretending or trifling | employments that should be made prominent. We should not have | quarrelled with Will Whimble for parading his tobacco-stoppers, dog- | whips, or fishing-tackle, in all companies, any more than we do now | with the ladies for putting forward their netting and embroidery; but | men should be diffident, modest, reserved, retiring, about their real | work, the labour of hand and brain, of soul and spirit, because it is a | venture, because they should know something of their own | weaknesses, and because far-off results alone can show the value of | their work, or whether it has a value beyond the occupation, stimulus, | and interest it has furnished to their own minds. | | | | | <"Essays on Social Subjects"> | | CHEERFULNESS is universally acknowledged as a duty, and as such is | affected by us all. We are glad, and find pleasure, a dozen times | a-day, and do no more than is expected of us ~~ in fact, should | pass for morose fellows if we did not smile at the accost of | every acquaintance: and if we can superadd an air of brisk | self-gratulation at the good fortune of the encounter, so much the | better. If, then, we have all to seem cheerful, a few speculations | on different kinds of cheerfulness, what is the best sort, and | how we may invest ourselves with it, cannot come amiss. The | ideal cheerful man is, indeed, a general benefactor. He is a moral | tonic to everyone about him. | For cheerfulness is a genial | strength; it can carry weights and support the weak. At its | greatest, it is a form of magnanimity. It is not ignoring the | troubles of life, not turning the back upon them, but owning | them, meeting them, and rising above them. And it teaches | others to do the same. It is a happy union of fine qualities ~~ | of an | | unruffled temper, a clear judgment, and well-proportioned | faculties. It is the expression of an inward harmony. However, if | we are to have much cheerfulness, it cannot all be of this | superfine quality; and, looking among our acquaintance, the | readiest examples are not of the heroic standard; though even | this is not so rare but that we believe every man's experience has, | at some time or other, come in happy contact with it. Only | cheerfulness in this nobler sense can hardly be spontaneous, this | is not compatible with human infirmity; it may look so, but the | man himself is conscious of effort, and has his moments of | reaction. We know this by the rules for cheerfulness laid down | by persons who have been distinguished for this virtue in | conjunction with great powers of mind ~~ rules and precepts which | all show consciousness of melancholy as an enemy at our very | doors. Great powers, as far as we can judge, are not friendly to | this habit of mind. Poets, philosophers, deep thinkers, even wits, | are not often cheerful men for themselves. All by turns have a | touch of poor Bunyan's experience, | ~~ but this only because these | powers are not well balanced; for where there is excess there is | too commonly defect somewhere. There is something pathetic in | the broad difference that constantly exists between the cheerful | man and the cheerful companion. Even Falstaff is a different | man in soliloquy; and many of those most | | noted for their powers of raising others' spirits have been | habitually hipped and sad in their solitary hours. Sydney Smith | is a contrary instance. He did not affect solitude, it is true, but | he describes his spirits as perennial, and those who lived with | him never saw him depressed, or other than the stay and | freshener of the household existence. But even he had his rule | ~~ namely, to

" take short views of life,"

to hold by | the present in all that is good in it, to refuse to look forward to a | possible change to worse, however imminent that worse may | appear; ~~ all things more easily said than done, and not always | wise if they could be done. It may, however, be because women | are more constantly occupied with the immediate present, | because their employments are more connected with the time | being than with building up a future either of fame or prosperity, | as well as because there is in the feminine organisation a more | even balance of powers, that our readiest examples of | cheerfulness are, we think, women. The girl cheers up home | more than the boy, the old maid is unquestionably more | cheerful than the old bachelor; and if we would raise up the | image, the very poetry, of cheerfulness, we recall some fair | matron, the presiding genius of the hearth, bright-eyed, | persuasive, who can | | Every form of this quality, whether in a man's self or for his | fellows, should be infectious; the spring of | | content should scatter drops of refreshing, and make us gay too | for more than the moment. All cheerfulness, even to be | attractive, ought to do us good, and not to be a mere attribute of | the man. But all does not do us this good turn. There is not, for | example, a more offensive fellow than one who insists on being | jolly, totally irrespective of our mood. A good deal of | cheerfulness is on the Miller-of-Dee principle, and consists in not | caring. So long as we do not find this out, it is all very well; but | the disenchantment is complete when circumstances disclose, | under the jaunty, easy hilarity, a hard indifference and positive | incapacity for sympathy. Such cheerfulness can only be | sustained by selfishness reduced to a system; and there is no | greater discouragement, when things are going wrong with us, | than to fall in with people who affect

"pity in their smiles | of comfort"

and yet smile on. We must not be hard on | merely constitutional cheerfulness. It sometimes seems as if | these social butterflies, these summer friends, had a place in | our economy, but at best it is only to add to our mirth or to | distract us momentarily from our trouble, not really to alleviate | it. There is a form of cheerfulness which nobody can stand: ~~ | | | perhaps because it is impossible the smiles should be real, but | rather, we incline to think, because smiles should be rare things, | and cheerfulness that is always parading itself in smiles is of the | wrong sort. People | | ostentatiously and notoriously cheerful are at best foolish | people, their spirits of a brisk but thin quality ~~ nothing about | them in good working order. The tiling we respect and admire | shows itself most unmistakably in its quiet moments ~~ the soul | looking out through the eyes. Anybody can smile; but to look | bright, with the muscles all at rest, betokens a habit of seeing | things at their best, and making the best of them. | Those in whose way it falls to hear of the characteristics of | modern ascetisms are constantly informed of the exceeding | cheerfulness, the almost childlike hilarity, observable in persons | who have renounced the pleasures of the world, abandoned | every natural tie, and made themselves desolate for religion's | sake. Whenever a knot of converts get together, we hear of | much laughter and boyish ebullitions of animal spirits. | No-one | visits a nunnery but, if the rule admit of his seeing a nun at all, | he comes back charmed by her smiles. No young lady falls in | with a Sister but she is struck, not by her resigned expression, | that

"leaden eye that loves the ground,"

but by her | cheerfulness. Perhaps serenity is not enough; the fair ascetic is | positively merry, and laughs with a silvery laugh. Nuns in the | hour of recreation are often described as children over again. | Some persons regard this conventual hilarity as a strong | sanction for this mode of life ~~ as, in fact, a miraculous reward | for utter self-renunciation. For our part, whatever reflection we | may incur by the avowal, we never hear of these ineffable. | | good spirits without irritation. What right have these people to | be so very happy? why should they have lighter hearts than | anybody else? whence this shimmer of smiles? What | satisfactory connection is there between seclusion and | separation and this exuberant joyousness? We even ask, If these | people who have turned their backs on us laugh while we take | life as a very grave affair, are we necessarily in fault? must the | contrast be owing to our worldliness? What is it that makes men | whose lot it is to live in the world often heavy and depressed? | what is it that gives the sense of weight? Not, we think, satiety | of pleasure, as some are pleased to assume, but the burdens of | life pressing on shoulders not strong enough or properly | disciplined, it may be, to bear them lightly. If the celibate or the | nun is merry when we are sad and lumpish, it may of course be | the sunshine of a pure conscience breaking out into smiles; but | may it not also be because they are free from the anxieties which | oppress us, and which they have taken violent means to be rid | of? There is a certain class of worries inseparable from the | exercise of the affections, and which cannot exist where the | natural affections are suppressed and superseded. We are not | wishing to exchange our burden for theirs. Their existence | would be an intolerable vacuity and restraint to us; we lack, it | may be, their contemplative faculty. But nevertheless they have | shaken themselves loose from the natural trials that beset us, | that compose our countenance into grave lines, hinder our | smiles from being as frequent | | or as beaming as they might be, and make fresh careless hilarity | a thing of memory, with which we can never again expect to | have anything to do. For, in truth, the most fortunate existence | has cares enough to make gravity our normal condition. The way | to be-a child again is, it seems, to throw them all over, though it | be to assume more onerous tasks, if only these do not pull at the | heart-strings. We are not saying that life is not pleasant. If it is | an

"anxious"

being, the most constitutionally | melancholy of poets calls it

"pleasing"

and

| "cheerful"

too. Grave as we are, we are probably happier | than we look; while, on the other hand, we have not much faith | in the hilarity we are now speaking of. It is compatible, we know, | with long flats of dreariness and misgiving. If it be not also | compatible with a latent yearning for | we are greatly mistaken. The | happiness of mature life does not show itself in marked, fussy | expression; it may lurk even under some outward evidence of | harassment. It is only the outside part of many a poor recluse | that is merry while she laughs like a child, and finds her | amusement and refreshment of spirit in childish things which | have nothing in them for the woman to relish. But all the same | we say that, if she would have been sad at her own old home ~~ | sad for the brother that has gone astray, for the sister drooping in | premature decay, for the mother fretted into ill-temper by her | trials ~~ and is now merry, having separated herself by one | strong act from the tyranny of these carking cares, we | | see no particular reason to reverence her jollity, though we do not | grudge it her. We will say also that, whatever she gains, she is | losing one most important point of training ~~ the sorrows and | pains of the affections. She may serve the outer world, the poor, | and the stranger, with an energy of self-sacrifice; but she cannot | love with quaking nerves and throbbing pulses any but the | heart's natural belongings. And this fact will be written in the | smiles of which so much account is made, which, however | beautiful in themselves, do not cheer our spirits, for the very | reason that there is, and can be, no sympathy and fellowship in | them. But we have digressed, not only into gravity, but into | polemics. | We sometimes think that mankind must at one time have been | endowed with a more robust cheerfulness than our civilisation | can boast, to carry them through the trials to which they were | exposed in lawless times. History is such a succession of | miseries, tyrannies, cruelties, and wrongs, that how people | stood it and lived out their days is sometimes a marvel. But | something constantly lets out that life under these conditions was | vigorous ~~ that people caught, with an alacrity foreign to us, | the pleasures within their reach. Even where torture and | hideous forms of death curdle the modern reader's blood, there | are continually indications, if we look for them, of a somewhat | jovial society in the thick of these horrors, and that not only | among the victimisers. In Mr Motley's book on the Netherlands, | what a wild cheerfulness characterises all | | the actors principally and most fatally concerned! Spirits may | be crushed in the end, but while there is hope, excitement will | always engender cheerfulness; just as soldiers are cheerful; and | probably both from the same necessity of

"taking short | views of life,"

while the present is occupied by stirring | events. | We may be a little over-educated for this frank, careless form of | cheerfulness. Ours must be in some degree the result of rule and | self-discipline, yet still the first qualification, the indispensable | ally, must be courage. There can be no cheerfulness without it. | We must have no bugbears, no frightful fiends in our rear | which we dare not turn upon. The cheerful man must be able to | look everything in the face ~~ take it in, in its just proportions, | but not dwell upon it. Such remedies as occur to him he applies | with promptness, but he broods upon nothing. Hence | cheerfulness is most rare and difficult to an active imagination, | unless this is allied to the most sanguine temperament. It is all | very well to tell some people not to dwell on things, not to look | forward, not to devise terrors; they cannot help themselves. We | perceive, therefore, that the cheerful man must be a busy one ~~ | not a drudge, but always with something in hand to engage and | arrest the attention, and impart interest to the present. We do | not much believe in that form of it which is fed by illusions. | Charles Lamb describes a man who keeps himself and his | household in supreme spirits by calling everything by wrong | names ~~ asking, for example, for the silver sugar-tongs when | the thing indicated, | | and under the very nose of both host and guest,

"was but a | spoon, and that plated."

Real, lasting cheerfulness throws its | own hue upon things, but it sees them in exact shape and proportion. | It also is one of its secrets to esteem everything the more for the | fact of possession. All the cheerful people we know think the | better of a thing for being their own; disparagement is altogether | alien to this temper, unless of things obviously beyond reach. | Cheerful people, again, have few secrets, and no willing ones; | they do not hug mysteries, and, in fact, have a way of scattering | them ~~ perhaps for the reason that in its nature cheerfulness is | akin to daylight, and while other humours shut up men

| "each in the cave of his own complexion,"

this brings him | into the sunshine. We can see all round him and into him as | well, and he is not only illuminated, but in his turn an | illumination; so that it is wonderful what a change in morbid | states of feeling and general misunderstandings the sudden | presence of a cheerful spirit will bring about. | | | | | THERE is a good deal in the tone and manners of our day to | foster a habit of quiet, passive contempt. In simpler states of | society, the man who values himself highly has little scruple in | confessing as much. Savages have no more reticence in parading | their good points than peacocks. We know that even the | Anglo-Saxon, when removed from the restraints of refined cultivation, | can expatiate on his own merits with perfectly unqualified, | unblushing complacency. American writers themselves are the | first to acknowledge this as a characteristic of their remote | outlying social life. There, men extol themselves in all the | simplicity of an ignorance which knows nothing higher or | better, and are frankly astonished at their own successes. | Nobody is thought the worse of for praising himself; and where | this is the case, whether in England or in the backwoods, we | shall not find the practice out of favour or out of date. But | among ourselves it is out of date. A man cannot puff himself off | with impunity ~~ without, | | in fact, being taken for a fool; and therefore, if he have ordinary | capacity, he keeps within bounds. But not the less must the | thought of the heart find some outlet. Men draw wide | distinctions between pride and vanity, but both have at least this | in common, they like to feel and to be acknowledged | first; and both agree, not only in the | craving for pre-eminence, but in the instinct to gain their end by | a side-wind ~~ to boast themselves by implication, if | circumstances will not permit the more agreeable incense of | positive praise and adulation. This resource evidently lies in | detraction, not spoken, not even conscious detraction, but a | process of disparagement, by which, without any visible, active | self-exaltation, the mind may keep uppermost in its own | estimation. It is not possible, Clarendon observes, to overvalue | ourselves without undervaluing our neighbours ~~ which he | calls contempt. Contempt, then, in some form, is the necessary | accompaniment of self-conceit. This is self-evident on | reflection, though not always apparent. A man may be vain | without being in manner contemptuous, and may indulge in a | habit of general contempt towards others, when we do not think | of him in connection with either pride or vanity. Nor is he | necessarily vain for himself. A vicarious vanity belongs to all | hero-worship. All people who have an idol are contemptuous; it | is, indeed, a necessary part of their cultus. In either case, a man | may be very far gone in contempt without being conscious of it | himself, or committing any strong overt act offensive to the | people about him; for, in its passive state, | | it is a mere practice of depreciation, and is taken for | sensitiveness or a fastidious taste. | | It is only now and then that a glimpse into motives discovers to | us how much contempt there is in the world. We may live in | intimate relations with people and only casually discover it. We | may be acquainted with two sets, and some chance may first | make us aware of the contempt in which each holds the other. | Indeed, there is this poetical justice to console the observer ~~ | the sentiment is seldom all on one side. We are sometimes taken | by surprise at the amount of scorn and superciliousness which | lurks under the most demure and seemingly unpretending | exterior. It would not be comfortable to the most philosophical | of us to know the tone of disparagement with which we are | treated ~~ the estimate at which our pretensions are rated ~~ in | certain quarters; and yet, if contempt is so common a habit of | thought, all must fall more or less under it. There are natures | with which we infallibly come in collision, so that they are | driven in a certain self-defence to look upon our weak points, | and take their stand upon them. We are told | We suspect that what is sometimes | loftily spoken of as "withering scorn" is the "curse" here | intended, especially as it is taken for granted that we likewise | oftentimes curse others, and few persons' consciences can be | quite clear on the point before us. | | There are minds, belonging to respectable good sort of people | too, so eaten into by this exclusiveness that | | they do not, at the bottom of their hearts, attribute to nine-tenths | of the people with whom they come in casual contact the same | nature as themselves, the same affections and passions. It needs | to be admitted to the honour of their friendship and esteem to | possess either head or heart. A great deal that passes for | goodness and even self-denial in the world has this passive form | of contempt at its root. There is a tacit assumption that nothing | good can be got out of people not included in a certain circle, | sect, or party ~~ that of course their pursuits are frivolous, their | aims mean, their conversation empty, their interests unworthy. | Under a profession of humility, there is the notion that in | intercourse all the gain and benefit must necessarily be on one, | that is, on their side ~~ that they must impart all, and can hope | to receive nothing good. This is the state of mind engendered by | every form of exclusiveness, whether religious or social. It | indefinitely restricts those natural bounds by which all | intercourse must be ordered and limited. It is often called | fastidiousness, but in fact the poor have as much of it as their | betters, and decent people contract habits of sour seclusion from | the same persuasion that their own company is the only safe | company they can indulge in. There are persons of every rank | who, as a matter of course, have a contempt for all people they | do not know; just as the Dodson family despised all who were | not Dodsons. They have fallen into a habit of regarding | themselves as fountains of honour. | To be out of their range is to be | "these people" and "those people," the "good | | folks," the "wiseacres," the "gossips" of their neighbourhood. It | is amazing the narrowness, the dulness, the utter vacuity which | can gather self-consequence and feed its importance by this | contumelious mode of grouping and classifying the world | outside itself; and yet, in a modified degree, this must be | recognised as so common a habit of mind that we are convinced | there is no rarer, as there is no more amiable and candid quality, | than habitual justice to the motives of people not in our own set, | and not subject to our influences. | | Contempt may well be a common failing, for it is the easiest and | most attainable form of self-assertion. If we seek for instances, | we are perhaps driven to witty or weighty examples, because | such contemners can give a poignancy and force to the | expression of their sentiments. We think of Gray pronouncing | his own University, where he chose to spend his days, | ~~ or of | Johnson, in dispute with an antagonist whom he considered | beneath him, | ~~ or of Pope's "dunces" and | "fools," or Warburton's "wretches" and "crews of scoundrels;" | but, in fact, contempt can exist as vigorously without the | pretence of brilliant and intoxicating qualities. Mr Gedge, the | landlord of the Royal Oak, could pronounce all the people he | knew, ~~ | could | without being ever compel1ed to prove his own superiority to | the people he despised. It was enough that he had an ideal. | Indeed, as contempt is avowedly an act of opinion and | judgment, it often | | flourishes most where there is no chance of being challenged to | do better, and so of shaming the ideal. Beggars are proverbially | proud, for this very reason ~~ they have an ideal for every | station and every duty of civilised life, and are never called on | to act out one of them. In the same way negroes are represented | as supercilious. They have no social status apart from their | masters. A white skin, then, is their ideal; they are contemptuous | on quadroons as being | ~~ mere | pretenders, as it were. It may be noted that nobody is so critical | of dinners as the man that never gives them. With what weight | he comes down on entrees and wines! | How pure and fastidious his ideal on every point of order and | arrangement! There is consolation, no doubt, in criticism of this | character; for the time it equalises distinctions. Our mind is | above our fortunes. It is a great thing to know what is what ~~ to | be on a level with the man we despise, if not even above him for | the time being. What a solace to despair would poor discarded | Brummel find, for the instant, in reducing his lost ally the | Regent to the mere impersonation of obesity ~~ | The death of rich or | great men often awakes the same sort of feeling. For once the | living dog is master of the position and enjoys a triumph. When | the young blood announced at his coffee-house the demise of | the Grand Monarque, | the airy familiarity was veiled contempt. He | was inflated with more than a sense of equality. Death had | placed him uppermost. | | | We have taken this side of our subject first, and regarded | contempt in its passive and least intelligent aspect, because | certainly learning, study of character, and mixing with mankind | tend to allay and moderate it; but no doubt contempt is quite at | home in its more recognised sphere, when backed and prompted | by acknowledged superiority, and with seeming right on its side. | It would not be easy to match from any age of the world, or any | station of society, learned or ignorant, Mr Ruskin's habitual | contempt for all persons and things that contradict his views. It | is headlong, monstrous, scarcely reconcilable with the | possession of reason; and yet Mr Ruskin has a wide knowledge | of his own peculiar subjects, and might have been in his own | line a great authority. But then he has acted on the assumption | that success in one pursuit qualifies him to judge of all pursuits | and all lines of thought. He has thought that study of art, of | Turner's pictures, of nature, constituted him a judge, as well of | all painters, as of every human need, character, and action. The | conclusion he appears to have come to is, that the man who does | not see all things with his eyes is wicked and stupid, a liar and a | fool. This is contempt in its most rabid form. Thus, though his | knowledge is great, it is ignorance which has misled him into | the frenzies which we regret; and we think all misplaced | contempt is to be traced to the same cause ~~ partial ignorance. | Few recognised pursuits amongst men will cause contempt if we | give ourselves the trouble to consider them attentively. But this, | clever men intent on their one hobby | | are as little ready to do as the most circumscribed intellect. All | have some vein of Touchstone in them.. When they survey | something not in their way, in another world than theirs, they | are ready to plume themselves on their want of sympathy as a | sort of distinction, and to find it | Thus severely practical minds enjoy | their contempt for every effort of imagination. People who | cannot see a joke have a contempt for fun. We have heard an | artist merrily enlarge on the utter folly of the study of language. | Swift condensed all that can be thought and said about music | into the difference between tweedledum and tweedle-dee. | Addison treats as a sort of drivelling the minute researches of | the naturalist. Fifty years ago, half the world was contemptuous | on science, and vast numbers now despise classical learning, as | if it were a very clever and original thing to despise it. In one | and all these instances we feel that only knowledge is wanting | for the feeling to evaporate. There is one motive for contempt, | however, on which the dull have it all their own way. There are | people who not only despise any given form or pursuit of the | intellect as perhaps we all do, but who have a contempt for | active thought and all its results as such ~~ as if it were an | inferior thing to write books, to know things, to think at all. | They regard themselves as the Hindoos do their Supreme God | ~~ as something above the vulgar processes of thought and | action. | | | | | Analysed, studied, looked in the face, it becomes a wonder that | contempt should be so potent a thing as it is. The poet tells us | that ~~ | | We ought, then, to despise the contemner as betraying defect | and deficiency in the very act. But in truth it is an effort of | independence which few can reach, to disregard the dictum of | what seems deliberate weighty disparagement from any quarter | whatever. Certainly there is a contempt justly terrible. The most | confident and defiant would shrink from such scorn as Dante, in | the very sublime of contempt, bestowed, for all comment, on the | weak and pusillanimous band who had lived only for themselves: | | | But it is neither the contempt of goodness nor of intellect which | men most dread. It is when it is vague, undefinable, neither to be | got at nor propitiated, a mere fear and shadow, that it is the | greatest bugbear ~~ the contempt of society or of the world for | something, we know not what, and expressed or entertained by | people whom, in their individual separate capacity, we may | really rather look down upon. The sort of fear people are prone | to have of servants illustrates, while it is an evidence of, this | dependent and abject state of mind. Now, as servants are our | fellow-mortals, they may be as worthy of the distinction of our | fear as anyone else; | | but the proverbial dread of falling in the opinion of a butler and | incurring his contempt, has nothing whatever to do with the | great doctrine of inherent equality. It is the sneaking part of a | man that here suffers, that quails under the notion that | something is done to him which he can never know, from which | there is no appeal. It is the closed doors of the servants' hall that | invest the voice of opinion there in such terrors. Still, it has its | grounds, and the very fear may work out its fulfilment. In | externals, servants are very likely to be correct judges. They | have an instinct as to who has lived in habits of command. They | respect those who show by some nameless freemasonry that | they are used to be attended upon, that the service of inferiors is | part of their heritage. They have a nice though unconscious | discernment of self-respect, and know at once where it resides. | They like a man who asserts himself without bluster or | assumption, they are judges of the particular qualities which | affect their intercourse. To be afraid of a butler is, then, to have | a misgiving whether we are quite the thing. The man who fears | such contempt should take home the humiliating lesson, and | regard it as a revelation of something wanting in himself. And | so of all contempt ~~ either it is deserved or it is not. There is a | remedy in either case, though we admit that our feelings cannot | really be settled by square and rule as easily as this argument | seems to imply. | | No doubt, contempt has its charm where it procures a monopoly | of regard. But this is but a narrow, ignoble satisfaction. A man | much engaged in important concerns, | | who has to act with a variety of characters and | tempers, and to clash with none, must not be | contemptuous. If he have disdain in his | disposition, he must suppress it at whatever effort. | But what an advantage over others he has who, by | nature or from an enlarged interest in human | affairs, from caring for what others care for, is | actually free from it, and can put himself in the | place of the people he acts with frankly and | unaffectedly! He finds a common ground in the midst | of all differences of training or station, and thus | feels the social link which it is the work of | contempt at once to ignore and to break. | | | | | THERE are few things which show a more candid mind than | a frank confession of dulness. It is an admission of occasional | vacuity, of self-insufficiency, which very few can bring | themselves to make, and which, when made, is not always | received with the humanity and tenderness such | ingenuousness deserves. People who never feel weary of their | own company have a contempt for those who do, and often a | very ill-founded contempt; for, in the first place, the | difference may be one only of circumstances ~~ some people | are much more exposed to dulness than others; and, in the | next, satisfaction with our own company is wise or foolish | according to the grounds on which it is founded. To be ever | dull is, no doubt, a mark of human infirmity. For this | exquisite mechanism of mind, thought, intelligence, ever to | collapse, to lose spring and vigour, to suffer cold obstruction, | should be a check to our pride of reason. But it is only felt to | be so when our solitude is thus visited. To profess one's self | dull in society | | where others are amused is a piece of pretension, a sort of boast, as | implying a tacit superiority. But, in fact, this too argues deficiency and | absence of power, often as great as the other. True vigour of mind and | body is never dull, and can turn all painless conditions of being to an | element of delight. If people are prone to feel dull, the scene of, their | dulness is more an affair of temperament, or at most of training, than of | intellect. | | We need not explain that the dulness we speak of is not any inherent | quality of the mind, but a matter of feeling. It indeed implies a certain | quickness of apprehension always to know when we are dull. There are | existences so void of interesting, elevating, or inspiring circumstances, | that only a dull head and a dull heart could reconcile themselves to | them; but the leaders of such lives make them what they are, would not | change them if they could, are content with them, and value themselves | on that content. Supposed immunity from dulness, then, may proceed | from all sorts of causes, creditable or the reverse. It may arise from | activity of mind, fulness of thought, an uninterrupted stream of | occupation ~~ which is always the assumed cause, ~~ or from slowness, | apathy, and a dead sterile imagination. Thus, a man may never be dull | because he contains everything within himself, or because his heavy | intelligence is on an exact level with his monotonous existence. Certain | it is that there are many who avow themselves perfectly satisfied with | their own company whose company gives others very little satisfaction | ~~ who, if they are not dull, for anything we can | | see, ought to be. It is an extremely happy thing in such cases that there | is this just balance; for the fact is, it is only very lively or engaging | people who can own themselves dull with impunity ~~ who can find | sympathy, or even toleration, for their infirmity; and this for the obvious | reason that in their case alone society is the gainer by it. Persons who | are dull in both senses of the word at once are just the heaviest load | social life can be burdened with. But charming people are the more | charming because they are not independent of their fellow-creatures ~~ | cannot pretend to the pride of seclusion ~~ and are thus driven as well | as led by their nature to show their best, conscious of some hidden | far-off bugbear which haunts the long hours of uncongenial solitude, | brightening the social scene by the contrast of its gloom. No doubt | much may be done by practice and self-discipline to overcome this | weakness, and everyone, if he is wise, will struggle against it. But there | is, all the same, an inherent difference between man and man which no | effort can do away, and the man who wants companionship will always | stand in a different relation to the world from the man who is | independent of it. What we argue is, that it may be incompleteness, not | inferiority: for, wherever the affections predominate, men will be dull | when they cannot exercise them; and wherever the mind and intellect | are worked by fits and starts, as some people are obliged to work them | ~~ effort alternating with the indolence of reaction ~~ these intervals | will be subject to conscious dulness. | | | We use the word dulness because our language has no other, but it is a | vast deal easier to feel dull than to know what dulness is so far as to | define it. Our classical writers all treat dulness as a quality. Men are | dull, and are loathed by the wits accordingly. We do not for a moment | assume any of our readers to be dull ~~ it is as | much as we dare suppose, in this active-minded age, that any of them | even feel dull under the ignominious condition | of not being absolutely all in all, each to himself. Johnson recognises the | word in our sense, but he is obliged to depart from his rule and furnish | his own example: ~~ | But this does not get at the bottom of the thing. Dull | work, dull leisure, dull company, dull solitude ~~ what is the common | element in them all? Theologians tell us that our nature shrinks from | absolute disembodiment ~~ that the spiritual part of us recoils from the | idea of bare exposure of its essence, of being turned into space | shivering, houseless, homeless. If we analyse dulness, there is | something of this recoil about it. It is not otherwise easy to understand | the horror with which men look forward to a threatened period of simple | dulness. The protests, lamentations, self-pity expended on a brief season | of dulness, are called morbid, wrong, ridiculous, by the people who say | they are never dull. The feeling expressed is so utterly incommensurate | with the occasion ~~ taking into account the absence of positive pain, | and the brief duration of whatever suffering there is ~~ that the whole | thing is to | | them affected, unreal, preposterous. It is as if, | like fretful children, these | clamourers wanted something to cry for; and certainly, if it only meant | not being diverted or exhilarated, dulness would be a weak subject of | dread. But it is more. There is a foretaste, a threatening of something | worse, a touch of undefined spiritual terrors in all dulness. A day of | simple vacuity, of not being amused, has no analogy with the dulness | our active imagination realises. Everybody is now and then neither | doing anything nor wanting to do anything ~~ unamused, and not | wanting to be amused. Everybody is vacant sometimes, and does not | dislike the sensation; but what has all this to do with dulness? A man is | dull, it may be, to other people, but not dull to himself. Wordsworth | prefers this state far before what he calls personal talk ~~ that is, gossip | ~~ the relaxation of half the world. | | | This is a picture of comfort, this is being at home with our household | gods about us. Here the lazy unoccupied spirit misses nothing. When | people feel dull, there is a sense of deprivation and exposure. We are | without something that answers to the mind for what clothing and | shelter are to the body. We are weak, open to aggression; we have lost | something; our completeness, our organisation is affected. Time ceases | to | | flow in this state, and prolongs itself into an uncertain sort of eternity | which we are incapable of measuring. Immersed in dulness, even the | future is too far off to excite hope; for dulness has in its very nature a | touch of perpetuity. If we find ourselves, for example, in for four hours' | perfectly dull talk, from which there is no escape, what good does it do | to say, It is only four hours, What are four hours compared to a lifetime? | and so on. We are not in a state to estimate the difference. Life itself | will end, and we accept this truth more readily than | that these four hours will end, which nothing seems to shorten. Solitary | dulness is, no doubt, a more awful and more mysterious infliction than | social dulness can ever be, but the majority of mankind are not exposed | to this extreme pressure on mind and nerve ~~ they are not thrown for | long periods utterly upon themselves. Dulness comes to most of us in | the form of uncongenial company and occupation. Whenever the mind | suffers from a suspense of its voluntary processes too long, we are dull, | as in protracted or mistimed instruction or amusement. We are dull in | scenes which make demands on our interest and intelligence that we | cannot meet. We are dull when our mind, or one side of our mind, is | defenceless, has lost its usual and necessary support, whether that | support be habit ~~ a word in itself conveying all our meaning ~~ or the | intervention of fresh ideas from without, for the want of which a painful | void is felt. We are dull, whether we miss the familiar scenes, faces, | voices, views of things on which we are wont to lean, | | or are shut out from that current of external life and thought through | which the mind derives its sustenance. | | Habit, in a sense, is the great resource against dulness. If we live long | enough, we are never dull in doing what we are accustomed to do, and | hence arises the little sympathy that age often shows to youth in this | matter. Youth has acquired no confirmed habits. It is not desirable that a | boy should be content always to spend one day like another ~~ to find | his book all-sufficient, or his work or play all-sufficient. His mind, if | healthy, has a clamorous appetite for change. His resource is variety of | occupation, acquirement, and amusement, it is never mere resting in | himself. He is not doing the best for himself if he is not occasionally | some trouble to his friends in finding him fitting change and diversion, | troublesome like the kicking, struggling, vivacious baby in arms which | will not allow itself to be forgotten. But parents who are proud of this | infantine restlessness are often little lenient to the sufferings of dulness | at an older stage proceeding from precisely the same cause. Unques- | tionably it is very convenient to others, and in a degree a sign of | strength in the boy himself, to be sufficient for his own amusement, to | have contracted habits of some sort early; but those who play the most | active and stirring part in the world ~~ practical men, men of action ~~ | have needed variety in their youth, and have been dull without it, | conspicuously and energetically dull, not | like the worn poet in | | the same case, but powerful to fill the abhorred void by some congenial | solace. | | But habit ~~ the panacea, the refuge, the protector ~~ is so entirely | dependent on circumstances that there is no dulness so pitiable or so | incurable as that which proceeds from the breaking-up of an accustomed | course of life, the dulness which proceeds from change, whether | self-chosen or inevitable. Poor Charles Lamb, always ingenuous, how frank | is he in the confession of his own delusions on this point! he who fretted | over his compulsory monotonous life of thirty-five years of work, | defied the chains of habit, and proclaimed that | and had his wish of idleness granted to him. If any | man, he certainly had a right to trust to his resources, with his wit, his | fulness of thought, aptitude for study, and felicity of expression. But | these only helped him to feel, and aided him in portraying, the | sufferings of his desolate unhoused spirit. He had worked in the heart of | London amid "familiar faces," and changed it for the country with only | strangers about him. How finely he insults the rural green, the varying | seasons, the summer sun himself in the dulness of his new life! | | | Such dulness | is but home-sickness, the languishing of a sensitive nature for its native | air and the shelter of old associations. | | Though we say that confessions of dulness seldom meet with sympathy, | unless relieved by wit and humour, yet all artistic pictures of dulness | make a deep impression. This was the point of Mde. D' Arblay's | Memoirs. The frightful dulness and vacuity to which her life was | suddenly reduced, appalled and fascinated every reader; and those who | heard Mr Thackeray's lecture on George III. will not forget those | evenings spent all alike in dancing three hours to one tune, and going | supperless to bed. It would have been better for himself and for his sons | if the poor King had realised that this was dull work; and there is a great | deal of dulness in the world, not confined to courts, that passes for | virtue and turns into habit, which it is well should be now and then | exposed. A sense of dulness might thus become a spur stimulating to | higher and better satisfactions. The world is too often unfeeling on this | point, yet it needs only to enter into another's dulness to pity it. We have | heard somewhere of the inhabitants of a country town who, in their own | way, were never dull. They had found out one remedy, the more | | effectual because they had never conceived of any other | ~~ one and all played cards. At length a stranger arrived | among them who could not take a hand at whist, who did | not, in fact, know one card from another. He had to | confess his ignorance before a large company. The circle | heard in silent amazement. At length his host, realising the | joyless blank, the utter dulness, of such an existence, | exclaimed in terms which alone could convey the intensity | of his sympathy ~~ | | | | | | MR DICKENS'S story of "Great Expectations" illustrates a | certain temper of mind which is perhaps a characteristic of | our age. Pip, from the time of his introduction to Estella, is | the victim of false shame. Her contempt for the manners of | the common boy forced on her companionship, curdled the | milk of human kindness in him. Naturally affectionate, from | that moment a shadow comes between him and his friend and | protector to whom he owed everything, but who had taught | him to call the Knave "Jack." What Estella is likely to think | interferes with what he ought to think; and gratitude slowly | but inevitably yields before the new influence. The picture is, | on the whole, a true one. So far as we can realise Pip's | situation at all, we can understand his temptations, and | acknowledge that his was the very character, or no-character, | to fall under them. But, indeed, false shame has not always so | much to say for itself as in this instance. Pip is taken from the | forge and made a gentleman, a member of | | what is technically called society ~~ so at least Mr Dickens | intends us to understand it. Now, undoubtedly people do owe | something to the class for which they have been trained and | to which they belong; and if Pip is a gentleman, the | honestest, truest-hearted blacksmith in the world, especially | if addicted to Joe Gargery's system of expression, must be an | awkward appendage. It is more easy to be shocked at Pip's | ingratitude than to know precisely what he ought to have | done with his brother-in-law. However, we see he is intended | to represent one of the vices of society, and we recognise his | fitness for the part in a general want of force and stamina, | and a predominance of the imagination over the judgment. | | Though we call it hard names, it would still be almost a | discourtesy to assume our readers to be ignorant of the | sensation of false shame, by which we mean shame the fruit | of vanity and imagination; for never to have known it is, in | our imperfect state, to be without the kindred quality of | which it is the abuse ~~ sensitiveness, a want which would | argue bluntness of feeling and dulness of perception. | Occasional fits of false shame, ~~ of being unreasonably | perturbed at circumstances we cannot alter, that are not of our | own making, that have nothing in them of which we ought, in | strict reason, to be ashamed ~~ have visited most of us. They | belong to civilisation as opposed to the more primitive forms | of society, ~~ to a state of existence where different interests | clash, where social and domestic ties may, and do, interfere | with one another. | | Young people, on their first admission to this outer world, are | especially afflicted by false shame; so that it may be regarded | as one of the moral diseases of the mind's infancy. It is at the | bottom of a great deal of their shyness. They cannot feel at | ease, because they mistrust something about themselves or | their belongings, and have that feeling of bareness and | exposure in the presence of unfamiliar eyes which attaches to | sensitiveness under untried circumstances. Everything then | assumes a magnified, exaggerated character, the place they | occupy on the one hand, and the importance of the occasion | on the other. The present company is the world, the universe, | a convention of men and gods, all forming a deliberate and | irreversible judgment upon them, and deciding to their | disadvantage on account of some oddness, or awkwardness, | or passing slip in themselves or in the accessories about | them. But, in most persons, time and experience bring so | much humility as teaches them their insignificance. It is not, | we soon learn, very likely that at any given time a mixed | assemblage is thinking very much about us; and then the | horror of a conspicuous position loses its main sting. This on | the one hand; on the other, we are not as dependent on the | award of society as we were. Even a room-full comprises, to | our enlarged imagination, by no means the whole creation. | There is something worth caring for outside those walls. And | also we have come to form a sort of estimate of ourselves. | There is now a third party in the question, in the shape of | self-respect. We realise that we are to | | ourselves of immeasurably more consequence than any one | else can be to us. Thus, either by reason or by the natural | hardening and strengthening process of the outer air, most | people overcome any conspicuous display of the weakness. | By the time youth is over, they have either accepted their | position or set about in a businesslike way to mend it. | | But there are some people who never get over this disorder of | the faculties ~~ who are always its victims ~~ who live in a | habitual state of subservience ~~ who defer perpetually to | some opinion, or supposed opinion, which they respect more | than their own, and under which they crouch, whether it be | that of an individual, a clique, or the world. The sanction of | their own judgment is no guarantee; it is powerless | unsupported by society's good word. If a man after twenty, or | at latest twenty-five, will harp in all companies on his red | hair, or be perpetually reminding people that he is little, or | embarrass them by allusions to his plebeian birth, or be | making absurd apologies for his relations, or depreciate the | dinner he has set before his guests, we have not much hope of | him. He fails in the quality which defies and puts to flight | false shame. He may be wise, he may be witty, he may have | the clearest head, the most fluent tongue, the readiest pen; but | he wants manliness. The fears, flusters, and perturbations of | false shame are a sign of some inherent discrepancy between | his intellect and his moral nature which will always keep him | immature. Undue compliance with either the social or | domestic instinct produces the same effect. | | Whether a man sacrifices himself by a superstitious worship | of public opinion or of private affection, the result is the | same. He may stultify himself as effectually by an excessive | devotion to his mother and sisters as by a like devotion to | Mrs Grundy; but our concern is with the latter devotee, who | lives in fear of being singular, who suspects all closely allied | to him of some misfit or incongruity. He is pretty certain to | accomplish his own forebodings; for such men are sure to do | odd things, as people must who think constantly whether | everything they do is according to rule, not what is | convenient to do. All our natural actions are done without | thought, and we can make breathing a difficulty by thinking | about it. | | A person under this thraldom, whatever his disposition, will | never be of the use he might be to his friends, while he | presents an easy mark to his enemies. No one is safe from | being thrown over by a friend who makes the world his | bugbear; for, whatever the justice of his own perceptions, the | opinion which he dreads, and which influences him, is an | inferior one. There is actually no limit to such a dependence; | it bows before every standard, irrespective of all capacity or | right to judge. Whoever can use the weapon of contempt is | formidable. Such a man is a prey to the insolence of footmen; | he trembles before the tribunal of the servants' hall, and | dreads the criticism of his butler, whose definition of a | gentleman ~~ of what is expected of a gentleman, of what a | gentleman ought and ought not to do ~~ he practically | accepts in preference to his own. All | | this is essentially demoralising. In fact, no benefits can secure | a man of this sort, no ties can bind him, under a particular | form of trial; and this not at all from baseness of nature, but | because he wants a man's generous self-reliance ~~ that | quality which the weak and the dependent learn to trust, and | which gives to manliness a value for which no intellectual | excellence whatever is an equivalent. All people are, of | course, in a considerable measure, guided in their ways of | thinking by general consent ~~ as, being members of a | community, they must be; but there is, beyond this, a slavery | in which its victim stands as it were unrepresented in the | world's parliament. Few errors bring less reward with them. | Nobody likes a coward; and a careless indifference, or even | defiance, of popular usage is often taken for a sign of | superiority. Human nature is not so hard and cynical as the | theory of false shame assumes it to be; and the world is much | more good-natured than men of this temper give it credit for. | It can discriminate, and sympathise, and tolerate exceptions | from its ordinary standard. As no phantoms are so monstrous | as the fears of a mind which abandons itself to the | apprehensions of false shame, so no predicament or dilemma | of actual existence has the pangs and stings which a busy | fancy conjures up in anticipation ~~ just as most disagreeable | things are not, when the time comes, as disagreeable as we | expected. | | There is a hardened class of self-seekers who override all | considerations to attain their end, to gratify a low ambition, | and get on in the world ~~ people whom Mr | | Dickens again portrays in his Mr Bounderby ~~ with whom | the genuine victim of false shame must not be confounded. | His conscience does not sleep, but his fancy predominates. | He owes his uneasiness to his susceptible nature, to the | rapidity of his flights, quick to conjure up scenes, and prolific | of imaginary contingencies. We may despise the weakness, | but must pity its victim as the main sufferer. Indeed, in some | cases it would be easy to trace a whole career changed by it. | Advantages of education are lost, friendships checked, | opportunities shunned, and habits of moody self-contemplation | induced at the age when action, the spirit of | adventure, and the excitement of new impressions are at their | highest in the more healthy and strong temperament; and this | not by any means wholly from the sufferer's own fault, but | because adverse circumstances, which vigorous and less | contemplative minds shake off or bend to their will, tell with | such blighting force on more sensitive characters. Writers of | modern fiction often show such suspicious familiarity with | the workings of false shame that it is easy to suppose the | ranks of authors may receive some valuable additions | through its paralysing influence, unfitting men as it does to | take that stand in the world of action which their intellect | might claim for them. The fashionable novel, a development | of modern society, has heretofore done much to create or to | foster the feeling. People no longer young bear witness to the | singular impression which those pictures made upon a crude, | uninformed fancy ~~ to the discontent they engendered in the | childish | | mind for the dull or homely circumstances of actual life. | Nothing could be more frivolous and merely external then the | tests of superiority and refinement set up by those arbiters of | manners and social standing; but for these very reasons they | were more within the compass of a young raw apprehension. | The best corrective (not to speak here of the moralist's grave | antidotes) was the romantic class of fiction contemporary | with and succeeding to the Almacks school, which took the | opposite line altogether. In tales of this order, characters over | whom the domestic affections do not tyrannise are | represented as mere monsters, and are treated without mercy. | Our readers will remember that in "Undine," which so | bewitched our youth, Bertha's pride is held up to scorn and | obloquy because she, who had been trained a princess, could | not reconcile herself at once to be a peasant's child; and all | romance takes for granted that the primitive instincts in every | noble nature predominate absolutely and without a struggle | over every mere social consideration. Miss Austen, who is | never led away by what is not true, ventures, in opposition to | this notion, to make one of her purest and most conscientious | characters, Fanny Price, acutely ashamed of her father and of | her home, because, under the circumstances, it was not | possible for her to be otherwise. But, in Sir WaIter Scott, | romance predominates; and in the only example of false | shame that occurs to us in his writings, Sir Piercie Shafton, a | not unnatural sensitiveness is rendered extremely ridiculous. | Modern writers enter into the sensation analytically, | | as they do into other complex workings of our | social being. As we said at the outset, false | shame and mere sensitiveness are closely | allied. People make their way in the world a | good deal better without either; and the one | slips into the other so easily upon trying | occasions, that it is wise not to test our friends | too hardly, nor to expose them to the minor | miseries and real dangers of this mood by | anything in ourselves that may be rightly | avoided. | | | | | THE present system of bringing different classes into friendly | relations with each other through the medium of gratuitous | instruction has, among its many excellent points, one which | we regard as questionable. It cultivates fluency of speech and | furnishes a school for ready utterance. The young member, | the young squire, the young master, is encouraged to address | his inferiors on matters that will inform and interest them, but | on the understanding that he is to be superficial ~~ that he | must not bring his mind to bear on the subject lest he should | become deep and recondite, and so talk over the heads of his | simple, ignorant hearers. His aim must be to say the | commonplaces of his theme with facility, which is supposed | to be the only gift such people can understand. All this our | young orator is very willing to do. Whether aware of it or not, | it is quite easy to him not to be deep, all he knows of his | subject being its commonplaces; but, thus instructed, he has | no fear of being shallow, and even where consciously most | | weak, he believes he is only adapting himself to his hearers. | So, strong in his condescension, he gets along, to his own | wonder and his friends' admiration, in a little flood of | verbiage. It is, indeed, astonishing what a volubility, what a | grand stream of words obedient to grammatical rules, a man | can attain to if he only have sufficient contempt for his | audience; and what gratification he derives from the exercise | of this power of empty fluency and strictly verbal readiness. | If he had respected his hearers, if he had been solicitous to | give them the flower of his thoughts, and to put these into | words which should recommend them to discriminating | minds, if he had aimed at rigorous accuracy, feeling that there | were listeners who could detect a fallacy and miss a link in | the argument, he would probably have gone home humble | and dissatisfied, with a sense of failure, conscious of many a | pause and stumble and awkwardness of expression. But now | he is complacent, and ready to begin again; for, after all, it is | how we have said our say, rather than the force and merit of | what we have said, which impresses us. It is how he has | acquitted himself, what figure he has made, which dwells on | the speaker's mind, and encourages or depresses him. And | facility, of all things, gives this confidence. | | There are, we suppose, many listeners who take the same | view of facility, who are satisfied with it as a thing in itself, | and believe it to be power and rhetoric, and an evidence of an | absolute command of a subject. The least discriminating of | any crowd will clap him | | most who says most words in a breath, if those words are said | with sufficient confidence; but the admiration is by no means | universal. Indeed, we suspect that, to a good many, fluency is | irritating; so that, whenever we hear a man's rapid flow of | words much talked of, we may be pretty sure, whether the | commender know it or not, that he has felt it to be a bore. It is | all very well to be carried away occasionally by a torrent of | eloquence on some subject on which we feel that, but for | some natural hindrances, we could be eloquent too; but even | where thought and speech run together, as they do in the true | orator, it is fatiguing to have to follow at a pace which is not | our natural rate of thinking; and all we hear of hanging on the | lips of speakers of this rushing, impetuous sort, means less | than it says. Those who literally follow the processes of | another mind have a task, whether a pleasant one or not; most | persons are content with conclusions, and with any rapid, | agreeable arrangement of words by which conclusions are | arrived at. | | It is amusing to hear how thinkers by profession often regard | this volubility, which takes simpler people as so fine a thing. | When Madame de Stael visited Germany, the great minds | there shuddered at the mere approach of this impersonation | of "French volubility." Her inconceivable facility, her | capacity of talking with freedom and fluency on every | subject, simply annoyed and disgusted Goethe, who hated | being put out of his way; and the more amiable Schiller, who | pronounces her | | while he owns her to be the most | cultivated and intellectual of women, yet groans over the | in her | company, and attributes the interruption of her presence to | the reverse of divine influence. He was worried by the | disturbance to his own trains of thought by her self-absorbed | eloquence; while it is instructive to observe how the opposite | circumstance on his side ~~ his necessary shortcomings in | the conversational duet ~~ won and propitiated her. He spoke | French badly; and when she perceived so many fine ideas | struggling through oral difficulties, when she found him so | modest and careless of personal success in his advocacy of | his own views, she | And is | not this quite natural? His self-love had been wounded by the | fearless readiness of her tongue; her tenderness had been | roused by hesitations and failures which might be taken as a | sort of homage to her own surpassing powers. There are, no | doubt, times when a man may be as fluent as he likes, when | the opportunity is his own, and he has prepared for it ~~ as a | statesman on some great occasion, a lawyer who must seem | to have impregnated his mind with his cause, and, perhaps | especially, a preacher; though even here we feel that a | momentary pause, an instant devoted to a choice of words, is | a very becoming act of deference to an intelligent audience. | But fluency, where we stand on equal terms with the speaker, | has often some tinge of positive offence in it. He evidently | thinks we can be amused | | and occupied at too easy a rate; and in the case we | contemplated at starting ~~ the young orator condescending | to his audience ~~ this state of things is soon reached. We | should have liked him better if he had betrayed some timidity | in our presence. We should have felt the thing less cut and | dried if the ideas had had to struggle into fit words. We | should not have been so utterly hopeless of his success in the | field he was entering upon if he had seemed to realise its | difficulties. | | There is, however, a social side of the question, which is | perhaps its more important one. Public fluency may have its | drawbacks, and may go for very little; but, at any rate, it | saves those who have to listen to such efforts the pain that | comes with the opposite, and more dreaded, and more | common defect ~~ an utter want of words. It is a sort of | fluency familiar in private life which is most to be | deprecated, a facility of speech which has grown out of | certain causes, such as want of taste, ignorance of the | meaning and force of words, and a habit of thinking in | phrases, and talking for talking's sake. This is a habit | encouraged and fostered by that want of respect for the | listener which lies at the bottom, we verily believe, of all | irritating forms of volubility, the notion that something less | than our best will do well enough for the person we are | talking to, and, more than that, will amuse and gratify him. | People with hobbies are always fluent, and we may say | always wearisome; but they do not come under the present | head, because their volubility is undesigned and spontaneous, | and arises out of enthusiasm for their subject. | | They sin through egotism and defective sympathy, but not by | condescension or disrespect. The quality we mean is acquired | by practice, and is highly valued by its possessors, but is | always based on some fallacy or insincerity. Either the | speaker assumes to know more than he does, or to be more in | earnest than he is; and the offence lies in the assumption that | he can amuse without being amused, and can hold our | attention while his own is preoccupied. It takes the whole | mind to do anything well, but this fluency is effected by | machinery and not by hand, and is, in fact, the knack of rapid | talking and slow thinking. | | So much talking with no heart in it has necessarily to he done | that it may seem hard to be critical. Indeed, the cases that | most readily occur of this volubility are in persons of great | apparent kindness and good-nature, who perhaps, through a | concurrence of circumstances, added to a naturally defective | discernment, have fallen into it. Yet not the less is there a | sense of condescension at bottom, which, if they could have | suppressed it, would have saved them from a snare. The most | excusable, and yet least excused, sort of volubility is to be | found in women whose lot it has been to feel themselves the | lively and invigorating spirit of their own small circle. Many | a daughter, for instance, has learnt to be garrulous, while she | prided herself on her fluency, in her efforts to amuse her old | parents. It seems cruel to pick holes in virtue like this, but the | fact remains that she has acquired a terrible, rolling, flowing, | amplified vocabulary, and that she is impressed with the | | notion that this ready tongue amuses and interests. And | whence comes this but from the lifelong mistake that the | elders on whom she lavished her efforts were really | entertained by talk spoken, not because it was worth | speaking, or because it expressed her mind and heart, but | because she conceived it to be adapted to failing powers and | the dull monotony of a secluded life? Yet all the while, no | doubt, the old folks had constantly felt weary of the tongue | that never ceased, and had kept quite unimpaired their ideas | of what was really entertaining and worth saying and hearing. | Trifles swelled into an unnatural importance, with all their | details, are only amusing if the narrative occupies the | narrator, and develops what is in him. It is impossible really | to impart pleasure through conversation without sharing it; | but the people we mean do not see this. There is the notion of | conferring kindness, of dispensing a sort of intellectual alms | out of the store of their indisputable superiority, which keeps | them above the level of their hearers, and tends to make their | conversation continuous, easy, unembarrassed, and rapid | beyond any other system of talk under the sun. Invalids as | well as old people must be very liable to the infliction of this | patronage. We ought to be lenient to any form of testiness in | them when we are conscious of having been talking in a | groove, our thoughts not keeping pace with our words; for we | should remember that anyone who sits down expecting to | entertain, without the further effort of rousing his powers to | sympathy, is engaged in an act of presumption. | | | But this facility grows out of less amiable forms of self- | conceit. The superiority of health over sickness, of spirits | over depression, of vigour over decay, is patent and | incontestable even to the suffering side; but there are people | who are actuated in all they do and say, and in their way of | doing it, by this same notion of conferring something, of | being the obliging party, who practically forget that human | beings stand in mutual relations. Education, if it does not | immediately infuse these ideas, fosters them on the one hand, | as it moderates them on the other. Thus a public school | training violently opposes any such inborn tendency, while | certain private crotchety systems as actively develop it. All | plans that put into children's heads the notion that it is their | part to instruct or to patronise their elders, lay the foundations | of a mechanical facility of speech, so that many would say | that private education makes the best talkers. Young people | who live at home, who perhaps are secluded from the | amusements of their own age, and consequently from its | society, are often indemnified for the privation by a notion | carefully instilled into them of their usefulness. If they may | not be amused after the careless fashion of their fellows, they | can, at any rate, lay themselves out to amuse, and study to | devote their talents to the service of others. This sounds | excellent, but neither a good manner nor a good style is | formed by it, because it is not the natural order of things. | Young people ought to do one another good, and they ought | to expect to get good from their betters, of whom they are the | unconscious cheerers. But as | | soon as it formally enters into the mind of boy or girl to | entertain their elders by their conversation, and to cultivate | topics with this view ~~ as soon as they set themselves to talk | as a sort of practice, collecting things to say, and storing them | in their memory, not because they naturally interest them, but | because they esteem them the sort of things for Mr and Mrs | So-and-so ~~ they are laying the foundation of a facile, | monotonous, inexpressive diction, which will haunt them | through life. It will get them many a compliment, no doubt, | and many a pretty speech of thanks, but will act as an | insuperable impediment to all natural, free, enjoyable, and | really profitable interchange of thought. A seed of conceit | and self-estimation is sown which, because it is never | recognised as a fault, or, rather, has all along been classed | among the virtues, is scarcely likely to be eradicated. As we | review all the fluent, complacent, mechanical utterances | within our experience, certainly a sense of superiority, a | mission to teach, to amuse, to do everybody good, or | pleasure, lies at the bottom of them all. We find no | recognition of mutual profit and service. | | There is a volubility which is free from this charge. Children | chatter, and some women chatter upon occasion; nay, men | will now and then bubble over with words, and we like them | all the better for it. It is an effervescence of the spirits, and if | only the brain, by ever so trivial an exercise of its functions, | has gone along with the tongue, the performance may be not | only endurable, but delightful and exhilarating. But, | | if delightful, it is so because it is spontaneous, | and indulged in for the speaker's own pleasure and | need of sympathy, his hearer's benefit being the very | last thing thought of. Alas both for those that speak | and us that hear, if they ever come to value | themselves upon this charming vivacity, and keep it | up deliberately for our entertainment after their own | is spent! But it may be said that we often have to | talk for mere talking's sake, which is very true; and | what philosophers have advised about never opening | our mouths unless we have something to say is | impracticable nonsense; but in this case we ought to | take the necessity quietly, and as a condition of | which each party is fully aware. The people we | mean throw themselves into the situation with a | spurious, unnatural relish, and use it as a sort of | practice-ground for their powers. A half-hour of | quiet dulness with a neighbour leaves us where it | found us; but when one of the two throws himself | with a false enthusiasm into the gap, and gets up a | flow about nothing ~~ the words being always half a | sentence, if not a whole one, ahead of the ideas, | while still the sentences are neat and complete in | their structure, and not a pin's point to be got in | between them ~~ we come away with a sense of | loss, and with a respect for the old science of | humming and ha-ing which puts us out of humour | with eloquence, ~~ as though we had been shown | the wrong side of it, ~~ until our nerves and our | memory have forgotten the infliction. | | | | | THE subject of folly is a wide one. Mr Buckle's sixteen | volumes would hardly exhaust its various manifestations; | what, then, can be expected in a single page? But it is also | attractive. Nobody is disinclined to have his belief in the | universality of folly confirmed by a new instance, | everyone is ready to speculate on the motive or want of | motive of ridiculous human action. But the foolish things | we have here set ourselves to speak of are not attractive. | They furnish food for anything rather than amused | supercilious analysis. Are there any of our readers who | never in their own persons say or do foolish things ~~ who | are never conscious of having been deserted by their good | genius? If there are, we do not write for them. It is one's | own foolish things which at present engage our attention, | for which we assume the sympathy of fellow-feeling, and | reckon on touching an answering chord in other breasts | not a few. We are not speaking now of grave errors and | mistakes, but of the inadvertencies, | | weaknesses, and follies which haunt our subordinate, | social, man-fearing conscience; which we may not know | to have been perceived by any but ourselves, but which | nevertheless affect us, not because they are wrong, but | silly, and because they may be thought more silly by | others even than by ourselves, which leave a sense of | self-betrayal, making us ask in bitterness ~~ | | | They are the things which allow us to go to sleep at night | with an undisturbed conscience, but wake us with a start | hours before the dawn, and set us wondering ~~ How | could I make such a fool of myself? Where was the | impulse to that vain show-off? What could have induced | me to talk of such a one ~~ to confide my private concerns | to So-and-so? For it may be noted that sins of omission | play but a small part in this periodical tragedy. It is not | lost opportunities, but heedless ill-considered speech and | action, that fret us at unseasonable hours ~~ some | thoughtless licence of the tongue, perhaps, or some | passing vanity leading to misplaced confidence and weak | reliance on sympathy. In the young, the fear of | presumption is a fruitful yet innocent source of these | stings of memory. Young people are sometimes made | uneasy for days from the notion of having committed | some unwarrantable familiarity, which under excitement | seemed, and very likely was, perfectly natural. | | We are advised to sleep upon certain designs, but it | | means really to wake upon them. Nothing is more curious | than the revulsion a short interval makes in our whole | view of things ~~ no magic more bewildering than the | transmutations which a few hours of insensibility produce | ~~ a few hours of being thrown absolutely upon ourselves. | What an idea it gives us of the effect of association, of the | action of man upon man! Nobody can allow himself to be | real and natural in his intercourse with others, and at the | same time act as he laid himself out beforehand to act, or | as he wishes (we may too often say), on looking back, that | he had acted. If this is true in the solemn and weighty | affairs of life, it must of necessity be true in the light or | less responsible contact of society, where the little turns | and accidents of the hour are constantly throwing us off | our rules, and tempting us to ventures and experiments. | All wit, all repartee, all spontaneous effervescence of | thought and fancy, are of the nature of experiment. All | new unplanned revelations of self ~~ all the impulses, in | fact, which come of collision with other minds in moments | of social excitement, whether pleasurable or irritating ~~ | are apt to leave qualms and misgivings on the sensitive | and reflective temperament. Thus, especially, sins against | taste fret us in the heavy yet busy excitable hour which we | have fixed on for the levee of these spectres, when our | thoughts, like hounds, scent out disagreeable things with a | miraculous instinct, drag them to light, fly from subject to | subject, however remote and disconnected, and hem us | round with our own peccadilloes. Society in the cold dawn | looks on | | us as a hard taskmaster, exacting, unrelenting, seeing | everything, taking account of everything, forgetting | nothing, judging by externals, and holding its judgments | irreversible. For, after all, it is a cowardly time. We are not | concerning ourselves now with bona | fide penitence, but only with its shadow and | imitation ~~ a fear of what people will think, a dread of | having committed ourselves, whose best alleviation lies in | empty resolutions of dedicating the coming day to it | general reversal or reparation of yesterday, to a laborious | mending and patching, which is to leave us sadder and | wiser men; along with a certain self-confidence (also the | offspring of the hour) that if we can only set the past to | rights, rectify, explain, recant effectually, our present | experience will preserve us from all future recurrence of | even the tendency and temptation to do foolish things. We | own this to be cowardly. It is fortunate that we cannot | mould ourselves on the model of these morbid regrets; for | the influences which make us seem to ourselves so | different in the rubs of domestic and social life from our | solitary selves ~~ so that we are constantly taking | ourselves by surprise ~~ are not all bad ones. They may be | more unselfish than those which impel to remorse, and | make us feel so sore against ourselves. There is a certain | generous throwing of one's self into the breach in some | crisis, whether grave or gay, which often brings us to | grief. There is a certain determined devotion to the matter | in hand ~~ a resolution, come what may, to carry a thing | through ~~ which is better than caution, though by no | means | | a subject for self-congratulation at five o'clock in the | morning; or, indeed, so long as it lives in the memory at | all. On the whole, it is better as it is. We are gainers in | freedom by living in a world where it is possible to | commit ourself ~~ to go beyond intentions ~~ to be | impulsive, incautious. If everybody were as self-possessed, | as much on his guard as we wish we had been | in these periods of harassed meditation, society would not | be a very refreshing or invigorating sphere. | | This is a surer source of consolation, as far as our | observation goes, than any argument from analogy that | our fears delude us. If we look round on those of our | friends whose prudence we can scarcely hope to equal, far | less to surpass ~~ whom we trust for manner, discretion, | and judgment ~~ there is scarcely one who does not now | and then disappoint or surprise us by some departure from | his usual right way of thinking and acting, by committing | some moral or social solecism, just one of the things to | haunt the first waking hour. We are not meaning merely | clever people, for cleverness has | a prescriptive right to do foolish things, but wise and | sensible people who have a rule of action, and habitually | go by it ~~ habitually, but not always; ~~ and a foolish | thing done or said by a wise man certainly stands out with | a startling prominence and distinctness, pointing out the | weak place there is in the best of us. When our wise | friend, under some malignant influence, says or does | something exceptionally silly, the thing assumes a sort of | life from contrast. It is quoted against him, and perhaps in | some quarters a permanently lower estimate | | of mind and character is the consequence. Do the same | things that in this case strike us strike the perpetrator? Can | a wise man say a foolish thing and remain for ever | unconscious of it? One thing we must believe ~~ it cannot | be only a latent self-conceit in the midst of our | humiliations and self-reproaches that leads us to assume | them not universal. There are people so uniformly foolish, | so constantly impertinent, rash, talkative, unsecret, or | blundering, that, if revisited by their errors, solitude would | be one long penance which could not fail to tell upon their | outer aspect. The fool par excellence | is not, we gladly believe, haunted by his folly. It is | when we have departed from our real character, when our | instincts have failed us, when we have gone against | ourselves, that we writhe under these tormenting | memories. | | The subject is worth dwelling upon for one reason. If, with | the exception of conspicuous fools, we could realise that | this class of regrets are not due to our particular | idiosyncrasy, but are a common scourge of weak, vain, | irritable, boasting humanity, it ought to conduce to charity | in our judgments. If we could believe that the people we | dislike suffer these penances, and could give them credit | for waking with a twinge an hour earlier than usual, under | the remembrance of impertinence, vanity, unkindness, | persuaded that certain definite offences against our taste | and feeling would haunt their solitary walk and make the | trial of their day, we could not but learn patience and | toleration. But we are apt to regard our annoyance as the | penalty of an exceptionally | | sensitive social conscience. We and the people we care for | cannot do foolishly without feeling sorry for it ~~ without | going through the expiation of a pang; but the people we | dislike are insensible, coarse, obtuse, dull, and brutish. | Theirs has not been a mistake, which implies a departure | from their nature, but an acting up to it and according to it. | They are therefore showing themselves as they are when | they show themselves most unpleasant and repulsive. | | Another mode of reconciling ourselves to this prompt | Nemesis of minor follies is that it may possibly preserve | us from greater ones. It may both imply caution, and keep | our caution in practice and repair. We have already made | an exception in favour of fools; but are people subject to | rash impulses ~~ impulses swaying their whole destiny | and the fate of others ~~ who find a pleasure in staking the | future on some unconsidered chance, ever visited by | regrets for having merely exposed themselves in no more | weighty matter than some foolish breach of confidence or | lapse of propriety? Are people habitually unguarded ever | visited by lesser remorse? Is not this rather a conflict | where habitual caution is every now and then betrayed by | counter influences? Does a man who is always boasting | ever remember any particular boast with a pang? Does one | who is always betraying secrets, and revealing his own | and other people's privacy ~~ always talking of himself, | always maudlin, always ill-natured or sarcastic ~~ ever | writhe under the recollection of his follies? It is hard to be | lenient towards some people, however much it is our duty | to think the best. | | | But whatever tenderness may be shown towards foolish | things, acted or spoken, whatever beneficent purpose may | be assigned to them in the social economy, our leniency | ends here. Little can be said ethically, and nothing | prudentially, for foolish things written ~~ for outbreaks of | our follies and tempers on paper; and yet what a fruitful | source of these regrets has the pen been with some of us! | And never has the sting been sharper than when we realise | that our imprudence is in black and white, beyond our | reach, irrevocable. The pen gives us a power of having our | say out which speech seldom does. We are free from the | unaccountable, almost solemn, control that man in bodily | presence has over man. Fresh from some injury, we have | the plea, the retort, the reproof, the flippancy, the good | things in our hands without danger of interruption. We | will write it while the subject is fresh and vivid, and the | arguments so clear that our correspondent cannot fail of | being struck, persuaded, crushed by them. In the heat of | composition we foresee those cooler, cautious hours in the | distance, and defy them. We have a dim notion that we are | doing a foolish thing, but we will act while conviction is | supreme, and we send off our letter ~~ to repent | sometimes how bitterly! | | It has been cleverly said that the whole folly of this | proceeding lies not in the writing, which is an excellent | valve to the feelings, but in the sending; and certainly | very few letters, written under immediate provocation, | would be sent if the writers slept a night upon them. But | the pen can do foolish things ~~ things below the writer's | standard of speech and action ~~ without provocation | | There are many people whose intellect and judgment | would stand much higher in the world's estimation if they | had never been taught to write. Men write letters and | women write notes in total neglect of the rules which | guide their conversation, and which win them sometimes | an extraordinary reputation for good sense. A whole | swarm of absurd impulses cluster round the pen, which | leave them alone at other times. A propensity for | interference and giving advice is one of these, a passion | for explanations, a memory for old grievances, and a faith | in the efficacy of formal, prolix, minute statements of | wrong, along with querulous hints, unpalatable | suggestions, and insinuations generally; all of which are | foolish, because they cannot, in the nature of things, have | a good issue, and flow from the ready pen in oblivion of | obvious consequences, which elsewhere hold the writer in | salutary check Indeed, the pen often wakes a set of | feelings which are not known to exist without it. If we | must be foolish sometimes, let us then give our folly as | short a term as possible. If it must leave traces behind, our | memory is a better and safer archive than our enemy's or | even our friend's writing-table. Therefore, if any warning | of the fit is granted, if a man have any reason for | misgivings, let him, before all things, beware of pen and ink. | Things are seldom quite hopeless till they are committed | to paper ~~ a scrape is never at its worst till it has given | birth to a correspondence. | | | GRUMBLERS. | | <"Essays on Social Subjects"> | | IF we see three or four men in really confidential talk, | thoroughly at ease with one another, meeting perhaps after | absence or separation, and relieving their minds of what comes | uppermost ~~ or if we observe a man in a state of snug, | comfortable communicativeness, encircled by sympathising | women whom he believes to take an interest in his affairs ~~ | what may we take for granted that this man or those men are | doing and saying? Without doubt they are grumbling ~~ | detailing their grievances, letting drop, according to their | different methods and characters, how the world has ill-used | them, and plotted to deprive them of their deserts. That there is | not much ground for this habit, we ought to infer from the little | sympathy each man gets from his neighbour beyond the | momentary attention of good manners ~~ an attention involving | no great sacrifice, for the observer of human nature is rewarded | for his complacency by some curious revelations. To be listened | to, however, is all that the grumbler expects ~~ almost, | | indeed, all he requires. It is not a case for active sympathy any | more than for activity of any other kind. This pathetic strain of | self-pity is simply a natural propensity finding its natural vent. | We own it generally strikes us that our neighbours ~~ those | whose course we have watched ~~ have done quite as well in | life, are as successful and prosperous as they had any right to | expect. If they have failed, we think we see the cause, not so | much in the mismanagement, spite, or neglect of others, nor in | adverse events, as in something in themselves against getting on. | It is a perfectly obvious case of cause and effect. But people will | not see this where themselves are concerned. Certainly most | men, without any conspicuous vanity or overbearing pretension, | betray an over-estimate of themselves and their claims on | society. They sincerely think they have a right to more of the | good things of this world than they possess or than their | neighbours get, and they consider the deficit as the immediately | traceable result of somebody's fault or mistake. They take their | stand on their strongest point ~~ their most prominent | pretension ~~ and infer that all else about them should come up | to this standard. That is, their highest pretension represents their | rights, nor do they think they are fairly used by fortune so long | as any condition of completeness lags behind. Everything is a | mistake, to be laid to the account of society or an individual, | that mars this ideal. They will not see that every position has its | wrong side. They will not recognise a balance of good and bad, | success and failure, as fair in | | their case, though it is clear as day where others are concerned. | Thus we may observe that the pre-eminent and typical grumbler, | whether he betrays vanity and self-conceit or not, has, at some | time or other of his life, been lifted out of his natural and just | level, and experienced a stimulus to elation of mind and | presumption ~~ some sudden or unlooked-for good fortune | disturbing the equilibrium ~~ some marked success. A man who | has had a hard life of it, who has had no signal successes, whose | existence has been one uniform struggle to keep his head above | water without any lifts or stepping-stones that can be pointed out | ~~ a man who has never seemed to his neighbours lucky ~~ is | seldom a grumbler. He is not likely to have any extreme view of | his own merits and claims; he is often thankful for what he has, | and prone, as a sort of consolation, to contrast his position | advantageously with that of others. It is the men fortunate in the | eyes of their friends who are the real grumblers; and it is easy | to trace the habit to some particular circumstance, occasion, or | course of events which they had not strength of character to bear | with becoming humility. Perhaps a dull man has the good | fortune to marry a charming and rich wife, a thousand times too | good for him. If his whole career is not en suite with this | commencement, if it only answers to his own character and | conduct, he settles into a confirmed grumbler and disappointed | man; and if he happens to have had two rich wives, he only | grumbles with the greater pertinacity because the world | | has not seen with these ladies' eyes. Or a man is visited by a | sudden flush of prosperity, unreasonable in its origin, and | therefore shortlived ~~ he is henceforth a grumbler. A popular | preacher who ceases " to draw " is certain to be one. The world | has retrograded fearfully since it left off crowding to hear his | sermons; his work is flat to him through the neglect of old | admirers; he has much to complain of. Again, the member of a | large family who has been uniformly most considered, who has | had more than his share of its good things, is in a position to be a | grumbler. The very sacrifices that have been made for him have | inconvenient results, holding him back; and he realises | hindrances and checks to his career which the less favoured do | not experience or are insensible to in their graver anxieties. We | accept it as an evidence of a-future existence of more perfect | happiness that every man at once assumes happiness as his | natural sphere; that he immediately settles and expatiates in it, | feels it his home, which is very like feeling it his right, and | cannot afterwards condescend to a lower level; and, being what | he is, he expresses this want and need of the supreme good, of | which he has barely tasted, by murmurs, mutterings, and | puzzled speculations on how and why it has eluded his grasp. The | grumbler has an ideal. He has felt, though but for a day, a | certain expansion, a mastery of a new and wider field, an | elevation of spirits, a sense of power, an impression of entering | upon a new and bright course; and the man who knows the | feeling which success is apt to infuse is loth to fall back to | | common things, to the knowledge that he is but one of a | struggling crowd: he looks about for the cause, and will not see | it in himself. He won the success ; it is circumstances that hold | him back from reaping the full and due harvest of its fruits. | However, transient or unequal success is not the only foundation | for a good grumbler. Those who from sluggishness of nature never | assert their rights are standard grumblers. It is a very common | mistake to suppose that such people are insensible to their own | claims. None are more keenly alive to them, though, from | indolence or shyness, they never put them forward at the proper | time. When they find themselves ignored, and see others do their | work for them and stand in then-place, they lift up the voice of | ineffectual complaint. Their friends are made confidants of the | grievance; and as such grievances are sure to accumulate ~~ for | no-one can keep his place without | a pretty tight hold ~~ we have a life-long grumbler of the | subdued sort; for our friend is never roused to active | remonstrance, and does not seriously wish to reverse matters, | but relishes the position of being an

"ill-used gentleman," |

fully sensible of his ill-usage. | Again, there are first-rate grumblers in the class of dabblers in | science, who know a little of everything and nothing well. | These men have a way of supposing themselves the equals of | others who are exclusive in their pursuits, and they grudge the | rewards due to concentration on one object. As they have a | thousand sirings to their bow, they have a thousand rivals, who | | seem to them to be carrying off the fruits of their labours. Every | invention has passed in an incomplete impracticable form | through their brain. They have been within an inch of a hundred | discoveries ; they can encounter | everyone on his own ground; and yet here they are | stranded while narrower intellects win the day. What tales of | neglect and injustice, what hairbreadth misses, what an | entanglement of mischances, all treasured up in an amplifying | memory, have stood in the way of wealth and fame, and are | poured by these sufferers into any ear friendly or patient enough | to receive them! Again, those who miss their opportunity are | grumblers. They have had a dozen chances and let them all slip; | and they look back with feeble, regretful murmurs against fate, | and count up their losses till they are proud of them, and | perhaps enjoy the grumble more than it was ever in them to | enjoy the' good fortune. Indeed, it becomes such a habit that | they cannot live without a grievance. They are always wanting | the thing they cannot have, and should an unlooked-for | opportunity for obtaining it arise, a host of difficulties before | unseen confront the weak and frightened fancy, and they recoil | from the venture. Men of position without money, or of money | without corresponding position, are grumblers. All professions | which leave a man a great deal of compulsory unproductive | leisure make grumblers ; and so do all into which the idea of | promotion enters. Naval and military men ~~ especially the | former ~~ are grumblers. Clerks in public offices are | notoriously such. | | They have one and all substantial grievances, we have no doubt; | but they have also a superabundance of time to arrange and | enhance them. It must be said for the active temperament, that it | exempts men from the temptation to grumble. Busy men are not | querulous. The material for grumbling lies mainly in the | memory, and the busy man has no time for retrospect. We have | often admired how a real grievance, a positive, undeniable | piece of ill-usage, drops off from the consciousness of a hard | worker ~~ the man whose days are filled up with various | occupations. Each day has its burdens, its rubs, its neglects ; but | they disappear with the day, and no catalogue of them is kept. | We do not know that the habit of grumbling is altogether | repulsive. A gentle murmur of regrets and discontents, when not | too strongly tinctured by envy or malignity, sometimes makes a | man tolerable who in prosperity is not so. It implies reliance and | trust in our good-nature, and a need of sympathy which is | engaging; and, to say the least of it, it puts us on a level with the | complainant. A man who has unburdened his breast of a | grievance, who has been confidingly peevish, who has let us see | ~~ under, perhaps, some decorous veil of disguise ~~ all his | inner grudges and his littlenesses generally, cannot ride his high | horse with us at any rate. There is, indeed, a philosophic form | of grumbling which is positively instructive when instigated by | a gentle cynicism. A man theorises calmly and dispassionately | on human affairs, himself never prominent, but pulling the | wires nevertheless, | | while he proves satisfactorily what a poor and worthless world | that must be which leaves certain minds and certain | intelligences in unrecognised obscurity. | Perhaps this fastidious age may be especially given to grumble. | In former times, people worked openly for promotion ~~ for | their own advantage in any line of life. There was no scruple or | disguise about it. We are mending this in delicacy. We assume | an air of lofty disregard to material interests; we will not | coarsely put ourselves forward; Ave wait for the world's good | things to come to us; we will not clamorously demand them. | This is excellent if they do come unsought, but if they do | not? When, after waiting and, truth to say, expecting, | we begin in middle life to realise that the good things are | not coming ~~ that they are not for us ~~ then we grumble. We | have indeed known precocious grumblers who prose in their | teens about the blunders of their education, but they are | monsters, not members of a class. Most people, we suspect, take | for granted during youth that a good time is coming ~~ that | everything, however perverse, may be tending to that good time | ~~ and are slow to criticise the training they are undergoing. | Trials and drawbacks are not supposed to be more than | temporary impediments to be certainly surmounted. But a | dawning of the true state of things comes in time ~~ we shall not | fulfil our expectations ~~ we shall never make a great figure in the | world or enjoy any large share of its prizes. Then, if there is | grumbling in us, we begin the habit, and | | henceforth we are either obtrusive grumblers, mere bores and | nuisances ~~ or speculative grumblers, tracing all to first | principles, serenely reasonable and consistent on false premises | ~~ or humorous grumblers, venting our personal discontent | under a quaint veil of satire on the world and its follies ~~ or, | lastly, grotesque grumblers, attributing every misfortune, small | and great, to the evil influence of our domestic star, to | something that happened before we were born, or when we went | to school, the more far-fetched the better ~~ regarding the most | ordinary operations of nature and effects of time as something | caused by neglect, and which proper vigilance might have | prevented. We have known men on the way to threescore, | account for failing eyes and incipient wrinkles by some | mismanagement of their childhood ~~ and proving that any defect | of mind or body, health or wealth, is directly due to somebody's | fault, and a legitimate ground for anathemas in the vein of M. | Jourdain ~~ | Grumbling is, in fact, a mode of accounting for all | our misfortunes without self-reproach or any appeal to | conscience. | To conclude, grumbling is a privilege ~~ it is self-assertion, a | sign of individual rights and a recognised status. Perhaps for | this reason women are not such grumblers as men. They are | often fretful, but fretful-ness is temper, and there is no | necessary connection between ill-temper and grumbling. When | women grumble, it is for their class, not each on her own | account, openly, unblushingly, boastingly, as is the way | | with men. They are not yet allowed enough independence of | action or play of individual character to have each an | appropriate grievance of her own. They complain that their class | is not represented; but whatever may be said of them, women | rarely murmur openly that they have not had their due chance in | life ~~ that their merits and accomplishments have been | underrated. The most strong-minded do not get beyond general | remonstrances at their sex's depressed condition, at the slow | recognition of women's claims to equality. When these ladies | carry their point, those who live to see the day will hear the | women of their acquaintance, each with an independent | grievance of her own, emulating their male friends in histories | of broken purposes, neglect, indifference, selfishness, blunders | of friends, and perversities of fortune. | | | | | THERE are some sorts of ignorance that are evidently not at all disagreeable | to, what we will call, their possessors. Indeed, pride in knowledge might | sometimes seem to have given place to pride in ignorance. We are used to | hear men boast of knowing nothing on such and such a subject, of being | profoundly ignorant on matters which engage the common attention, and of | which most people have a smattering; and we have learned to understand, by | the obtrusive confession, either that the speaker's time has been better | engaged, or that Nature, liberal to him in great things, has inflicted on him | some slight defect or incapacity separating him from less gifted men by an | idiosyncrasy. Or, it may be, he has such high and superior notions of what | constitutes knowledge, that nothing less than entire mastery, amounting to an | exclusive possession of a subject, deserves the name, and that everything | short of this is ignorance. Again, there is an honest philosophical ignorance | which must be rather pleasant, | | for it comes of clearness of perception. The very ignorance of certain | profound thinkers is impressive, and strikes awe. | In fact, there is a form of it | that only one of this sort can feel. Owing to the | lucidity of his thoughts, the | keenness of his apprehension in things which he does understand, he is alive | to a strange and startling contrast when by chance he falls on anything that | puzzles him. He finds himself pulled up; he is sensible of having arrived at | the traditional millstone; his reason is | consciously at fault, and straightway he | lays his finger on the dark spot, and says, "This is ignorance!" In such a | confession there can be no shame ~~ in fact, it is not so much he that is | ignorant as the human race of which he feels himself the representative. He | knows that what man sees he sees, but it is given to him to distinguish with | exactness between the light and the obscure; he is agreeably conscious of | being, in his own person, a test and gauge of mortal powers, a discoverer of | the limits of human thought. And if there | is satisfaction in these voyages into | unfathomable seas, there is another form of ignorance which surely supplies | heartier pleasures still. We do not | speak of that "ignorance which is bliss," for | this the child is restlessly bent on | exchanging for a painful knowledge, but of | that form of ignorance which, never being recognised at such, remains a | comfortable life-long companion; the ignorance, emphatically, of the vulgar, | that "blind and naked ignorance" which | | | | because, not knowing one thing more or better than another, and being | sustained by indomitable self-reliance, | it sincerely mistakes its uniformity of | defect for general enlightenment, and trusts its intuitions. Again, there is | feminine ignorance, recognised on all hands for what it really is, yet held in | high esteem as an engine of coquetry and as a conscious fascination. A pretty | or a charming woman feels herself more pretty and more charming for not | knowing anything hard, deep, or recondite. It costs her nothing to disown the | slightest acquaintance with the dead languages, or science, or anything that | calls for abstract thought. In the opinion of those whose approval she most | cares for, she might as well assume Miss Blimber's spectacles as shine in | anyone of them. | | These forms of ignorance are, however, one and all, remote from our present | theme, which is that ignorance of which some of us ~~ how many of us! ~~ | are conscious, and which is anything but pleasant. We speak of the ignorance | of which we make no parade, which is dragged from us against our will, or | unwittingly revealed while our good genius is sleeping, which has been with | some of us (till time and experience did their work of reassurance) our | skeleton in the closet, which any day might bring to light. For, though never | wholly got rid of, it is on the hope and sensitiveness of youth that this pain | presses most sorely. In those ingenuous days when the memory still tingles | with examinations, when we have not ceased to believe in the knowledge of | everybody else, when the phrases, "What | | every schoolboy knows," or "What every schoolboy would be birched for not | knowing," seem to mean what they say, then it is that we recognise what a | shameful thing it is not to know more. Then to stand convicted before our | fellow-men of not knowing certain facts, of having perpetrated some gross | blunder in what is assumed to be a common heritage of knowledge, is a blot | and a slur, and brings with it a sense of disgrace amounting to dishonour. He | has missed a very poignant and memorable sensation who has never blushed | in secret at some hideous lapse, nor for its | sake desired to hide his head from | the accusing light of day, realising in fancy what the Finger of Scorn must | mean. In truth, many a young man, not naturally cruel, has heard with a sense | of relief of the expatriation or even death of some witness of his shame ~~ | some one before whom, for instance, he has committed himself to an error of | some hundred years in a date, or has betrayed confusion about kings and | sides in the Wars of the Roses, or confounded the Vedas with the Sagas, or | not known the identity of St Austin with St Augustine, or has supposed "It | must be so," and the rest of it, to come in somewhere in Hamlet's soliloquy, | or that Haydn composed the "Messiah," or that Tycho Brahe lived before | Sanchoniathon, or has laid bare some extraordinary confusion of his mind | about eclipses of the moon. Not that he cares | about the Vedas or Sanchoniathon, but it is horrible | to be thought ignorant of the things that other | people know, or are supposed to know, or that he thinks he once did know, | only memory let | | them slip before it had fairly got hold of them. For the poor memory gets all | the blame, as if memory were responsible for what the attention never gave it | in charge. Treacherous memory, which with so many of us is responsible for | our ignorance! ~~ "with creeping crooked pace," grudging, vacillating, | uncertain, playing the part of that | Ignaro, "foster-father of the giant dead" ~~ | | | It is certain that in most of us, without any sense of amendment in ourselves, | this strong deep disgust at our ignorance passes with youth. We begin to | suspect great barren tracts in everybody's range of information. There are not | many people who do not betray a blank in some point where we had assumed | them to be well informed. Everybody commits himself in turn, not, perhaps, | in the way of conventional ignorance, but in ignorance of matters which it is | equal1y a disgrace not to know. For why should what men learn from books | and polished society be the only test? Why is it not as dishonourable to have | neglected the use of our eyes? A little experience convinces us that culpable | ignorance is not confined to the form of it which most vexes the detected | soul. The subject takes a more general form, apart from our consciousness, | and one which we can contemplate very much at our ease. | | | It is indeed wonderful how little some people contrive to learn of things that | it does not seem easy to help knowing, and it makes general progress the | more surprising when we consider how little it has been helped on by the | mass of mankind. The great proportion of those that live in towns, and have | before them all their lives the processes of building, the distinctions of | architecture, the suggestive hum of machinery, the varieties of merchandise, | the profusion of markets, are dead and blind not only to all that these things | teach, but to what is obtruded on their eyes | if it does not immediately concern | their own wants and vanities. Nor does the country tell them more. They will | not know from what hills the stream that waters | their fields has its source, or | towards what river it flows, or what counties and villages it passes by. They | cannot distinguish the note of the birds that have sung to them since they | were born. They have discovered nothing for themselves of the habits of | beasts or insects that have haunted their path or forced themselves on their | regard from childhood. They do not know the flowers at their feet, nor the | outline of the horizon their eye ever rests on. | We verily believe that there are | a good many highly educated people who could not for the life of them recall | the outline of a cow or a sheep without | ludicrous blunders. Why is not all this | universal knowledge? Why are the people who notice what comes before | them to be marked by a separating name and called naturalists? Why are we | ashamed of a failure in what comes to us through books and the | | costly instrumentality of masters and teachers ~~ why do we blush at any | flagrant slip in history, or science, or language ~~ and keep cool and easy | under any extravagance of error in what nature, through our own observation, | might teach us? There are, no doubt, plenty of | answers, still it is a question. | | In contemplating the general ignorance, and the popular injustice as to what | constitutes reprehensible ignorance, we thus grow less sensitive towards our | own. Also, be it added, there are forms of it which inevitably grow upon us. | There are a vast number of things which we knew as boys, and have | forgotten now, and we perceive that the knowledge and the ignorance are | much on a par. It was a knowledge of mere words, an imposture, fertilising | neither heart nor brain; we feel that, if it had entered into either, it would | have remained with us; or, being genuine knowledge, though no longer at our | fingers' ends, it may yet have done its work, and contributed something to | what there is good in us. Unquestionably, the mind that has learnt things and | forgotten them is on a wholly different and superior footing from that which | has never received the teaching. Thus most things learnt may be intended to | be partially forgotten in everything but the training they have given. | Cultivation is certainly consistent with a great deal of ignorance, if the | constant confession, "I do not know," is to be the criterion. | | In another respect, too, we learn to take our individual ignorance coolly. We | find we can fairly keep it out of sight | by a constant exercise of caution, and a | | sort of involuntary finesse which is itself an education. Society generally is | up to the fact that the polite assumption of universal knowledge in all its | members is an assumption. No well-bred person will | put it to the test. We do now and then come upon a questioner, a self-elected | social inspector, who does by society what a malignant school-inspector does | by a class - lay himself out to find, not what they | do | know, but what they do not. But society is up in | arms, and makes common cause against such disturbers of its smooth | equanimity. How differently does the polite example of that | the | thoroughly well-informed man, show himself! He takes for granted, not in | hypocrisy, but through mere genial good-nature and desire for sympathy, | some share of his own gifts in everyone he meets. "Everybody knows a little | Arabic," we once heard a pleasant man of this sort say in a mixed company, | to account for his being able to converse in that language. It was a | bona fide, though, | as it proved, ill-founded assumption, | which he would have been very far from putting to the proof, but which gave | everyone a little flavour of Arabic while the | conceit lasted. In the next place, | we find that the ignorance of which youth is | so sensitive is not the barrier it | was supposed to be. The world is not governed by those who know the most, | nor is it what men know, but what they do, that determines their place in the | world. How much ignorance, for example, is daily displayed by our leading | journalists! If, by chance, we happen to have real information on some | subject on which their graceful | | sentences flow so easily, we shall certainly detect error or misstatement ~~ | not intentional, but the result of ignorance. The writer is out in some | important particulars. There is a general air of | familiarity with the subject, of | knowing what he is about; but we see that he goes on assumptions for want | of knowing the facts. And yet the world would much rather receive its | impressions from a man who writes well than from an expert dryly up in his one | theme; and perhaps wisely, for the ignorance of the practised writer is | tempered by large general experience, which preserves him from flagrant | blunders, and may, likely enough, assist him to an approach to the truth | sufficient for general purposes. We are sure that, with some skilled confident | writers of this class, an ignorance which throws them upon their own | resources is better for their purpose than half-knowledge ~~ always an | uncertain, halting, hesitating guide, which simply puts them off the scent of | instinct. | | Intense as is the shame of convicted ignorance under | certain conditions, there is still a delightful | source of relief to the ingenious | mind in a frank confession, in making a clean breast of it, and revealing | blanks, smirches, confusions of memory, and even startling deficiencies in | the matter of "what every body knows," in showing ourselves to some | sympathising hearer (he must be sympathising) | just as we are. But if this self-portraiture | is not to our mind, and our ignorance in certain fashionable points | of knowledge presses on us, the thing to do is to get up some subject of | which we | | stand a chance of being sole student in our own circle. It | matters not how trifling the specialty, if a man only knows | something that nobody else knows, the world will respect | him. Only be an authority upon beetles, or even sea-weeds, | and you may have small Latin and less Greek, you may | know nothing of literature, and be grossly in the dark on | politics, and it may all tend to your honour. If you know | absolutely nothing else, how much you must know about | beetles! It is a case of concentration of the powers, of force | of will, of single aim, of that ardent, indomitable pursuit of | knowledge which is passion. And this is, perhaps, only a | caricature of the truth-a truth of which, in an age of new | sciences and perpetual discoveries, it is a comfort to be | reminded ~~ that a wise man must, after all, be content to | be ignorant of many things. | | | | | | | THERE are few things that more clearly show the difference between | man and man in points not easily got at, than how they conduct | such a private matter as keeping a journal. The practice itself is | simple enough, but the purposes for which it is undertaken, and | the mode in which it is carried out, show the odd contrasts ~~ | the entire variance in aim and view ~~ that may exist under | much outward conformity. Something that must be done daily, | and that a task of no absolute necessity, even if it occupy three | or at most five minutes of every day, is a burden on time and | method which we suspect the majority of men are not equal to. | Everybody at some time of his life begins a journal; but because | it exacts a certain punctuality, and because the trouble promises | no immediate return, and because, too, people get tired of the | seeming monotony of life ~~ and the mere bare events of most | lives have a way of looking very monotonous when written down | ~~ it is, we believe, | | seldom persisted in. No-one | understands the value of such a record till it is too late to make it | what it might be. We do not suppose there exists a chronicle of | the daily doings of a life from childhood to old age, yet we can | imagine nothing more interesting and valuable to the man who | has kept it; and who would not be glad ~~ if it could be referred to | without too keen a self-reproach ~~ of a close and exact memorial | of his life and actions, and of the influences brought to bear on | them by the progress of events? | Are we right in surmising that by many persons whole tracts of | life are forgotten ~~ lost, never to be recovered? If we are | mistaken, it is only another proof of those inner differences of | mental constitution of which we have spoken. We suspect, | however, that it is no unusual thing for men to be separated | from certain stages of their life ~~ from events that happened | after they had begun to reason and to think, and in which they | actively shared ~~ by a thick veil of unconsciousness. It may not | be utter oblivion, perhaps. The memory of them may lie hid in | some corner of the brain of which we have lost the key; we may | even approach very near their whereabouts at odd times. Now | and then they may give a faint intimation of their existence by | intangible hints ~~ in dreams and fragments, associated with | sight, or sound, or scent ~~ but eluding all pursuit, all attempt at | investigation. We just know that there is more in our past than | our memory reports to us, but practically whole periods of it are | gone. To how many does not any sudden question | | of our doings and surroundings ten, or fifteen, or | even five years ago, fill us with a painful sense of loss | ~~ of having parted from ourselves? A gathering in | distinctness mantles over what once engaged our time | and interest. A chain is broken, and links are missing, which | should at a touch have taken us back to | place and scene ~~ recalled to us our fellow-actors in | them ~~ brought back thoughts, words, and doings in | their first distinctness and reality ~~ and, wanting | which, all is dull, misty, disconnected, or at best partially | remembered. We are impressed with a sense of | self-desertion and neglect, as though we had not appreciated life, | its pleasures, its associations, as we ought. | All persons recollect what has once deeply and vehemently | stirred the feelings; and every thing and person associated with | such occasions will always stand out in strong relief. | Something brands particular days and moments into the most | treacherous memory, or into something which is more part of | ourselves than memory seems to be. But where this passionate | sentiment, whether of grief or joy, is missing, as it is in all | persons for long tracts of time, all is confused and in | distinct. Our inner tablets are blurred, and have to be | deciphered carefully and with very uncertain results. | We are drawing an extreme case, perhaps; and there are minds | so orderly, and memories so retentive, that our picture will | convey to them no meaning. But in so far as it is true, it is an | argument for keeping a record of daily events, however | seemingly monotonous and trivial ~~ and even the more so if | they present no | | salient points. For when our days pass in comfort and ease, | unmarked by strong excitements, the ingratitude of forgetfulness | most naturally slips in; yet what pleasant glimpses will a few | lines, containing our comings and goings, and certain familiar | names, open out to us, if their definiteness furnishes the key that | alone is wanting to bring back a distinct picture of a past stage | of life! And how much does the most condensed chronicle | convey to us when we are fairly separated from it for ever! | What sentiment, and even dignity, time throws on the persons | and influences which we see now so nearly affected us, though | we scarcely knew it at the time! The record of the most | uneventful life falls naturally into chapters, and has its epochs | and marked periods of time which stand out quite separate when | we can survey the whole in distinct groups and distances. | Nothing in it is really unimportant unless we were wilful triflers, | in which case no elaborate formula of confession and | self-accusation need teach us a sterner lesson than this brief | epitome of a frivolous existence. | Addison gives a journal, studiously without incident, of a useless, | insignificant life ~~ a model of thousands of lives then and now. | It has always struck us as a strong argument for journal-keeping, | though this use of his satire was not contemplated by | the satirist. What a distinct picture of a state of society, and of | an individual growing out of that society, does this week of | inanities give! Gossip turns into history under our eyes. We | realise the sleepy, quiet existence when men were content not to | think, and clung to authority ~~ the | | early hours, the pipe, the coffee-house, the sparse ablutions, the | antiquated costume and cuisine, the knee-strings, the | shoe-buckle, the wig, cane, and tobacco-box, the marrow-bone and | oxcheek, the corned beef, plums, and suet, and Mother Cob's | mild, and the purl to recover lost appetite. We have the walk in | the fields, then possible to London citizens. We have the slow | progress of news, kept languidly exciting by uncertainty, and all | the pros and cons about the Grand Vizier, and what rumour said, | and what Mr Nisby thought, and our hero's vacillations of dull | awe and interest as either got the ascendant ~~ now disturbed | dreams when both authorities agree that the Turk is strangled | ~~ now the cheerful vision,

"dreamt that I drank small beer | with the Grand Vizier,"

because Mr Nisby did not believe it | ~~ then Rumour giving it as her opinion that he was both | strangled and beheaded ~~ ending our suspense at the week's | close with the ultimatum,

"Grand Vizier certainly dead," |

which would have reached us in three minutes, and | summed up all we knew or cared about the matter. It is an | image of the life, public and private, of the time ~~ as no | journal which tells events can help being in its degree. The | dryest details have a certain touching interest when read years | after. The most homely doings are imbued with a certain poetry | when we can do them no longer. Pacts external to ourselves are | invested with an historic value, as telling us of social, or of the | world's, changes. | But the obvious use, to assist the memory, or rather to construct | an external artificial memory, is only one | | out of many reasons for keeping a diary. Diaries kept with this | view rarely, if ever, see the light, and ought never to see it. All | journals that are published have some other object. There are, of | course, the journals avowedly public ~~ such as

"Raikes's | Diary"

the work and legacy to posterity of an apparently | idle life ~~ which aim at being current history, and in which | personal matters would be out of place. There is the mixed | personal and public journal, as Madame D'Arblay's, who could | not probably have lived through the cruel dulness of her court | life but for taking posterity into her confidence, and pouring | into what proved not unwilling or unsympathising ears the | indignities and annoyances inflicted on her by the old German | Duenna. There is no real freedom, no absolute undress, possible | in such compositions; but the graceful negligee | allows an attitude towards self very congenial to some minds | ~~ a sort of simpering modesty and flirting humbleness of tone, | and a bridled licence towards others, midway between caution | and outbreak. More is said than might be spoken, while a | reticence of expression is maintained which only faintly and | coyly reveals the true state of feeling, and yet hopes to excite as | much indignant sympathy in the reader as the most unmeasured | vituperation. There are other journals which seem to act the | purpose of the child's battered doll ~~ a mere vent for passion | and sore feeling. The fair page receives all the bitterness, | irritation, or malevolence which may not find any other outlet. | It is like declaiming to dead walls. Thoughts are recorded, words | | are written down, something is done, and the relief of a scene is | secured at no expense either to credit or position. It is | something in this spirit that Mrs Thrale writes of her old friends | in her journal at the time of her second marriage. | One of the most curious diaries on record is that consisting of | twenty-seven folio volumes, from which Mr Tom Taylor | constructed the Autobiography of Haydon the painter. It is a | work to make one believe in Mr Wilkie Collins's diaries as | embodied in his tales, where the people, all of them, spend | every alternate waking half-hour, for years together, either in | vehement, in tense scheming or action, or in writing their | schemes and actions down in their journal ~~ rushing from | action to pen, and laying down the pen to return to action, with | a seesaw perseverance which we own we should not have | thought probable or natural but for Haydon's twenty-seven | volumes. He paints and writes, and writes and paints, much on | the same plan, and pours out hopes and fears, and imperiously | invokes high Heaven to make him a painter, at the conception | and progress of every picture, in a way to make the heart bleed | when we see what an intensity of feeling and ambition went to | the covering of those ugly and huge stretches of canvass where | never a man of all his groups stands on his legs. However, the sad | moral of wasted hopes and energies is not against | journal-keeping, even on a gigantic scale, but against painting | enormous historical pictures without knowledge or skill ~~ | indeed, with few qualifications but faith in the will. | | The journal is a first-rate one, though the pictures which | constitute its main theme are bad; and a good journal of a busy | life, or rather such a selection of it as Mr Taylor has made, is a | gift to the world as good in its way as a fine picture. | Most people drawn in any way to the use of the pen have been | tempted to an ambitious effort at journal-keeping in early | youth. This is really the impulse of composition. If young people | have not a story in their brains, they turn their thoughts inward; | the mysteries of being begin to perplex them, and they sit down | fairly to face and study self. The notion is natural enough. | Whom or what should we understand so well as ourself, which | we can look into and ponder upon any time we choose? So | there is written a page of life-history with a good deal of | solemnity and effort, which infallibly leads to the discovery | that self is not a more easy thing to understand than other people, | and soon ends in very weariness of the maze in which the | young student finds himself. But there are many people who | never make this discovery, who persevere in the practice all | their days, and through whom ordinary readers mainly know | how journals are kept, and are instructed in their use. And it is | here we learn that external differences between man and man | are often merely faint shadows of the inner differences which | separate spirit from spirit, in spite of the great family likeness | that runs through us all. We beg, in what we say, to distinguish | entirely between self-examination as instituted by conscience | and subject to | | an external law, and religious journals kept not to record | events, but to register states of feeling. | Let anyone | to whom the practice is new sit down to | describe himself to himself, and he will find it is only the | outside he can reach. There is something which we feel defies | language ~~ which we can only approach by an amount of study | and a pursuit into motives which issue in a treatise on the | understanding; we are driven from the private to the general, | and landed in metaphysics. We find we have to withdraw from | ourself and stand outside before we can say anything | intelligible. We are disposed to think that in reading, after an | interval, any attempt of this kind, it is not the real old self that | we see, but the state of mind then aimed at. We do not | recognise ourself in the person drawn. It might pass with a | stranger, but we know better. We cannot perhaps attempt a | counter-portrait, but we feel this does nothing to | represent that intricate, contradictory, complicated, mysterious | being, one's self ~~ mean and poor ~~ meaner and poorer than | we can find courage to prove ourself by example, yet with | gleams of something higher and better than we fancy other | people would ever guess, with something to excuse (as it seems | to ourselves) our worst and basest acts. In fact, our identity | becomes a question as we muse upon the shadow our pen of the | past conjures up. Are we the same that wrote this confession | twenty years ago? Are we responsible, or are we not? We have | to sweep away these cobwebs before we can frankly own | ourselves, or take | | upon our present consciousness the debts and responsibilities of | our past. | We are then driven to the conclusion that, strictly for our own | use, these personal delineations would be without value ~~ | would miss their aim as being fallacious and superficial. We | cannot present a picture of our state of mind at any given time | which we can honestly call full and accurate. We may say things | of ourself that are true, but we cannot read them afterwards | without a running comment changing or modifying their | bearing. And the constant use that these self-portraits are put to, | as well as the extreme vagueness which characterises the | self-accusation, even while clothing itself in the strongest language, | excuses us in thinking that in the majority of cases self-teaching | has not been the only, perhaps not even the main, object. There | is often apparent a deliberate intention of utilising the exercise. | The thought of other readers comes in with influential force, | dictating a formula; and where this is the case, the journal then | only becomes a recognised form of dogmatic teaching, and ~~ | as based on the fallacy that others are admitted into an inner | privacy and retirement where they were never dreamt of ~~ | surely not the most useful form. Whenever we see that there | was actually no thought or apprehension of other eyes ~~ | whenever the scrupulous conscience commits itself | unreservedly to paper ~~ we experience something of the shame | of real intruders, and feel we are where we ought not to be ~~ | as in the case of some of Froude's curious self-torturing | | confessions, or where Henry Martin reproaches himself for | having sat silent, and said nothing to the coachman about his | soul, in the few miles' drive between parting with his betrothed | and leaving his country for ever. | After all, it is a point on which one person has no right to | prescribe for another. It is possibly a mere case of sympathy, | and there may be high uses in religious biographies to those who | can appreciate them. The journal valuable to everybody, | however, is the simplest possible record of a man's own doings, | and the dates that clear up his past and arrange it in accurate | distances. Perhaps, as a fact, the most uneventful lives are those | most frequently thus noted down. It is something to do, and | gives significance to what is felt an unimportant career. Lord | Bacon remarks, | The truth is, it is | only in novels that the zeal to keep a record increases with the | complication of business. After a busy day or week, our journal | is a decided bore; but we need not say the more active and | stirring the life we note down, at some cost, it may be of our | ease, the more valuable, and even satisfactory ~~ though | satisfaction is by no means the thing to be aimed at or expected | ~~ will it be in the retrospect, and when we have floated into still | waters again. | | | | | | | THE season is approaching when all busy people to whom fate | allows the happiness of periodical relaxation take a holiday. | The natural transition from labour is rest ~~ from mental strain | and effort, leisure. This, then, being an intellectual and busy | age, leisure, as its corrective, should be cultivated and | understood. But it appears to us that real leisure is a neglected | if not forgotten pursuit ~~ such leisure as gives the charm to | Walton's "Angler," as breathes in Mr Dyce's well-known | picture of Bemerton, and as is so tenderly and graphically | described in "Adam Bede" as belonging to the Sunday | afternoons of a past generation. Leisure is, indeed, the natural | reaction from work, especially mental work, but it needs | some independence and courage to accept it as relaxation in | these days. Now that people can do a great deal in a little time, | and go far for a little money, mere repose of mind and body, | even intelligent repose, seems slow and poor; and thus | | labour retains its hold on the busy, only changing its aspect, | and calling itself amusement and distraction instead of | business ~~ accepted as a substitute for leisure, but by no means | fulfilling its functions. | When Charles Lamb declared that, had he a son, he would call | him Nothing-to-do, and he should do nothing, it was the | yearning of a mind overwrought in uncongenial work, and | deliberately ignoring the nature of leisure. Nothing-to-do | would have had no taste for his father's ideal. In fact, it is an | accomplishment to be able to enjoy leisure. It needs a mind | able for a given time to feed upon itself and to furnish its own | delights ~~ a condition of which the idle and the over-busy | are alike incapable. It is only the mind disciplined by work | that can estimate the charm of leisure; but it must be a mind | to which work has been a discipline, not an instinct and a | necessity, as it is with some people. What constitutes the | desired state is acquiescence in work as a duty, but never | being so far engrossed by it ~~ so far its slave ~~ as not to | regard leisure as the reward and Sabbatical consummation of | labour. On the other hand, Sydney Smith enumerates among | the consequences of civilisation a vast number of persons with | nothing to do, and those, he says, who have nothing to do, | must either be amused or expire with gaping. To recommend | seasons of leisure to the victims of blank idleness would be a | mockery. Their only notion of pleasure is excitement ~~ to be | relieved for a time from the intolerable burden of themselves. | We suppose there is no mind so fertile as not to know | | what this void is, or to be without experience of the need of | stimulants from without, and therefore there is | no-one who | can cheerfully endure long unbroken periods of leisure; but | we believe that the richest, fullest minds are the most capable | of it, and also find it the most absolute necessity. A great deal | of the work of the world is rushed into from the unconscious | dread of vacuity. There is no alternative with many people | between doing something positive and absolute vacancy. | When they stand still from their work, having nothing to fall | back upon, they feel idle. Now idleness and the enjoyment of | leisure, however often confused, have really nothing in | common. Leisure is a process of mental assimilation and | digestion for which habit or nature unfits a good many. Busy | unreflecting minds never can recognise it as relaxation, and | therefore must so far sympathise with idleness that they too | must seek in diversion and distraction the counterpoise for | their ordinary condition. | Leisure is the state of receiving impressions without direct | deliberate search for them. It implies a mind in a receptive | state, all its senses and pores healthily open. What | refreshment is equal to this passive reception of new and | agreeable images during a period of natural fatigue, allowing | the time and scene to inspire their influences without effort or | hurry? But it needs not a few requisites to fit a man to be thus | ministered to by the occasion. His tastes must be cultivated, | and he should have a good faculty of observation; he must | not be a man of one idea; he must | | have a tolerable serenity of temper, and should also possess | the quality of patience, permitting surrounding influences due | time to work their effects. This faculty of waiting, of taking | and giving time ~~ and a longer time than active, over-busy | temperaments can believe worth while ~~ is an essential | concomitant of all great efforts. Genius cannot do its work | without it. Poets and inventors of all kinds cannot | accomplish their mission without periods of passive reception | of impressions in the gentle trance of leisure which the busy | world confounds with idleness and waste of time. We might | also claim for love of leisure a conscience free from sudden | stings and great alarms, but that this goes beyond our theme. | To leisure certainly belongs the power of knowing, what we | like ~~ of being aware of our own tastes and affinities. It | takes a long time ~~ sometimes a lifetime is not enough ~~ to | teach people who are doing what other people do and | pursuing a routine, how far they are consulting their own | happiness. Almost all the expensive pleasures, the | dissipations of life, are committed by persons who have never | quietly asked themselves how far they are interested by them | or really care for them; but people thrown upon their own | resources know immediately when they are bored. The | mind which gives itself time to breathe and think is far less | liable to these mistakes, if not wholly safe from them, as it is | also safe from the danger of possession by a fixed idea. The | man who secures to himself intervals of leisure will not often | be the victim of hobbies. These will be | | found to infest minds incapable of thorough, genuine | relaxation. | As we have said, the true idea of leisure is inseparable from | work. The only animals that seem capable of it are working | animals ~~ working not from instinct, but compulsion. Leisure | must occupy an interval with work behind and before ~~ work | to look back upon, work in prospect; and we think also it is | more complete and more enjoyed with the labour of others | before our eyes and impressing the imagination, as we see | horses at pasture spending a good deal of their leisure in calm | survey of the turnpike road where the drudgery of their lives is | passed. The sight of other horses engaged in the toil from | which they are exempt, enhances their sense of rest. | "L'Allegro," with all rural works and sounds in busy operation, is | a poet's exposition of leisure. By a few magic words he brings | before us a succession of busy images which we survey in a lull | of charmed repose. Tennyson's lotus-eaters, in the land

| "where it is always afternoon,"

induce a sympathetic | dreaminess of quite a different temper from the refreshing | realities of Milton's rustic muse, and have no affinity with | leisure. Again, leisure is to be sought and enjoyed in the fishing | village, watching the fisherman's strenuous toil and the fitful | picturesque business of the whole population, rather than in | the watering-place, where everybody is idle. Here, the | idleness infects us, and we feel vacant; there, we sympathise in | our repose with other men's work, not in selfish immunity, but | recognising the law of alternate labour and rest to which we | ourselves submit. Soon | | those athletic workers will abandon themselves to the utter | relaxation which only sailors and fishermen can attain to. | Soon the village-green and the blacksmith's forge will offer | some compensation to the rustic for the day's heat and labour, | and soon leisure must give place to work again. The scenes | which naturally occur to us as congenial to leisure will imply | nature and man working together. The factory and the loom | ~~ all that has to do with steam ~~ are too unremitting, too | unvarying, too noisy. Even in the labours of nature where | man has no part, those effects are most conducive to leisure | which are intermitting and homely, or at least familiar in | character. The remote, the sublime, and unchanging in scenery, | produce exaltation and excitement when people are duly | affected by them, but they do not leave us in sufficiently calm | possession of ourselves for leisure. Something new, something of | the nature of surprise and change, is necessary to all pleasure; | but leisure asks for it to be of the least exciting character, felt in | new effects rather than in new scenes. Under the influence | of leisure, these act on the intelligent mind as first impressions | do on childhood. There is no conscious effort, but there is a | receptive power which the over-busy temperament never knows. | What are

"the children sporting on the shore,"

or |

"the forty cattle feeding like one,"

or the humours of | the farmyard, or the evolutions and harmonious clamour of a | flock of seagulls, to a man who has so much to do before | bedtime ~~ so far to go ~~ such a train to catch? Yet how | freshening and invigorating are such and a thousand similar | sights to a man with | fall like a blow. | Perhaps this is partly the reason why plans for the enjoyment | of leisure are never formed. Persons who care | for it could not take these means to acquire it. So, then, | things must remain as they are, and people must go | through any amount of weariness and expense to procure | | excitement, while they are fully aware that the most agreeable | hours of their lives ~~ those most pleasant at the time, and | leaving most unalloyed memories ~~ belong to some happy | period of leisure, especially companionship in leisure, which | came then with so little trouble that we wonder why it does | not come oftener. But perhaps quiet pleasures are least to be | reckoned on; for, after all, they need a mind at ease and in | accord with its surroundings. Trouble and care may be | forgotten, driven out by other minor worries and anxieties, but | an oasis in our own desert may be harder to find. Yet, if it | could be managed ~~ if for some short space we could withdraw | from our work, not necessarily in body, but in spirit, with some | few congenial companions ~~ if we could make sure of a few | sunny days of real peace and quiet thought and talk ~~ if this | could now and then be tried, we are sure some happy | experiments might be wrought out, sending men back to their | work with mind and body more refreshed and purses not so | emptied as by the more elaborate and conventional arrangement | which is the acknowledged type of holiday in our day. | | | | | | PROBABLY not one of our readers is so fortunate as not | to number among his acquaintance an asker of questions, so | curiously infelicitous in the subjects of his | inquiries, and so persevering in the pursuit of them, as | to make the being

"put to the question "

a very | intelligible torture, even with no rack in the background. | An adept at awkward questions is, indeed, one of | Nature's born tormentors, and his mere presence sends | a thrill through any sensitive assembly. We are not | speaking of persons who for a purpose, or prompted | by malice, ask unpleasant questions. Questions are a | natural weapon of offence, and in malignant hands are | death-carrying projectiles; but when a man knows | what he is about, he will not, for his own sake, be reckless in | flinging mischief, seeing that it will surely | recoil upon himself; besides that, on the other hand, | we know our enemies, and can be on our guard against | them. The questioners we mean are well-wishers, | unconscious of their mission to scatter mistrust, uneasiness, | | and dismay into every circle they enter. They are as obtuse as | old Edie Ochiltree affects to be in his inquiries after the | Praetorium, and cannot understand why any subject, sustained by | a protracted catechism of probing questions, is not matter for | agreeable conversation. They like the company of their | fellow-creatures, and have a sort of backhanded pity for them, which | leads them to recognise everyone | ~~ and, as it seems, catalogue him in their minds ~~ by | his misfortunes, mischances, or out-of-sight annoyances, which it | is evidently their notion of sympathy to bring into open court. | No man is so prosperous, so hedged in by good-luck, but they | will prove they know something he would rather not talk about, | and make that the basis of their dealing with him. They carry a | bunch of keys that unlocks every one's dark closet, have an | unfailing scent for the traditionary skeleton, and evidently a | bewildered notion of the duty of throwing wide open the doors | that conceal it; and all this in blundering good-nature, insensible | to the miseries they stir up. How it is that they always remember | the wrong thing, and inquire after the wrong people, and take | persevering interest in what those most concerned affect to forget, | is a perversity beyond reason or analysis to account for. We only | know that, for our sins, it is so. If the man you have pinned your | faith upon has failed you, if you have a son that has come to no | good, a daughter whose marriage has disappointed you, or a | friend who has used you shabbily, our questioner will, in blind | unconsciousness, lay siege to your trouble | | and get at the bottom of it. So you have to tell whether you | do or do not hear from your scamp of a brother in Australia, or | how a bad speculation has turned out, or what are the | particular tenets of the sect your sister has fallen away to. | For questions of this sort must be answered. They are put in | good faith, and evidently arise out of inherent want of | observation, or a different view of life from the ordinary one ~~ | a view that does not believe in scamps, and recognises no | social scale of gentility either in religions or families. All | that can be done is to treat the subject from the questioner's | stand-point, and make the best of it; it would be mere impolicy | to resist or resent his interrogations. He is led by his instinct to | your sore place; you feel a fate in it, possibly a retribution. | There is another sort of questioner, not so terrible in idea, but | often, in fact, a cause of equal torment ~~ one who will leave | your failures and worries alone, his perceptions being correct on | these points, but who is possessed by an unaccountable curiosity | to inform himself of the amount of your knowledge, or, possibly, | of your ignorance. These self-constituted inspectors will ask | questions with as much system and pertinacity as though they | had to furnish a report of your proficiency. There is a sensation of | being put upon a chapter of Mangnall, or of being in for another | competitive examination. Or the querist wants to know your | experience ~~ not your opinions, but what you have seen. Your | accuracy is tested; you answer, as it were, on oath. Hard | questions constantly call you back to | | positive knowledge.

"Give me the facts,"

our questioner | seems to say,

"and I will find the judgment."

| Questions may follow all the outer rules of civility, and yet drain | us of our self-respect for the time being; for the mind is so | constituted that its own esteem depends on the estimate of | others, and if a man in company acts as though we were ignorant | or injudicious, we are likely enough to feel so. In both these | examples the offence lies in the interrogators' showing | themselves, whether instinctively or otherwise, alive to our | weak points, and insensible to the more impressive, dignified side | of us. We account for it by an evident thick-skinned defect of | sympathy, apart from any shade of malignity; but, all the same, | we endure an attack, and suffer under a helpless sense of | exposure. | But, at any rate, these people ask because they want to know. | There is a third habit of questioning much more common than | either of the two we have indicated, where the inquirer achieves | all he aims at by putting an interruption in an interrogative | form. Most persons known for asking questions never wait for | an answer, and never want one. Their share in conversation is not | to start a subject, for which they have not sufficient | suggestiveness or invention; but to rush in with irrelevant | queries, to interject questions into other people's discourse ~~ | questions feigning to bear upon the topic under discussion, but | really deviating from it ~~ and whose only purpose is to relieve | the interrupter from the weariness of silence or the faintest | effort of thought. No conversation can be sustained under this | | mode of interruption. It is, of course, the habit of children, and | the mode of meeting it should be the same with child and man; | they should be made to do penance for every giddy, irrelevant | question, by an act of forced attention. It is very rarely ~~ only, | we should say, in books composed in the form of dialogues ~~ | that information is ever imparted by the method of deliberate | question and answer; for the reason that, in real life, the people | who ask the most questions never listen to the answer. They | ought to be made to do so if it were not too much trouble. The | only weapon against the aggressive mode of questioning is to | insist on your right of reply, in spite of the shifts, evasions, and | writhings of the impatient inquirer caught in the snare of his | own setting. | A question is often only an assertion with a spice of triumph in | it, and so, conspicuously, needs no reply. On all occasions of | sudden elation we are liable to this form of vainglory; and it has, | we do not doubt, a good deal to do with the American habit of | asking questions, which writers describe as still in full force. | Miss Bremer, who writes warmly of the many congenial spirits | she finds in New England, makes this almost a solitary | exception to the pleasures of intercourse.

"But, oh! how | these Americans, especially these American ladies, do ask | questions!"

And we gather that it is all done in the | exultation of showing off their country and its wonders to a | foreigner.

"Have you such scenes or such great works in | your country?"

~~ meaning, of course,

" you have | not."

From hence we | | gather that the familiar form of check with which troublesome | children of the Old World have been snubbed for so many | generations has never been imposed on the inquiring youth of | the New, and would be contrary to the freedom of American | institutions. Mrs Mrs Popchin has awed their infancy with the | story of the boy who was gored to death by a mad bull for | asking questions. In fact, they have never in their lives had

| "Don't ask questions"

said to them ~~ a precept which has | created a good deal of modern ridicule, but which, meaning, as | it generally does,

"Don't ask a string of questions in a | breath,"

is a wise one, at once forming the manners and | referring the mind to its own resources. | Another trying form of question does not arise from any vain | desire to be talking, but from mere impatience of detail. People | will not allow a speaker to tell a story his own way, and to work | up the interest by such elaboration as is needed for the fit | unfolding of the narrative. They cry

"Question!"

as it were, | and clamour for the end, when, in fact, the end is nothing without | the middle, and the narrator is balked of his gradual | denouement. And there is the question which shows an | utter miss of your point, and which drops upon it and | extinguishes it like a wet blanket. To know what questions to | ask and what to refrain from, is evidently among the first and | most imperative principles of good manners. A question is the | natural resource of a vacant mind, and nothing but the check of | politeness prevents vague, desultory people from putting | | questions all day long. With them it is an act of self-discipline | not to ask of every occupied person, What are you reading? to | whom are you writing? what are you doing? where are you | going? ~~ though nothing comes of it, and even the curiosity is | not real. It is only an impulse of propelling their vacuity into | another person's business, and so coining into a sort of contact | witli occupation through one of the most irritating and | distracting means of disturbing it. | Thus to be, in any of these various ways, known as an asker of | questions, is to be known as a bore, as a hindrance to natural | flowing intercourse; but there is a reverse habit of mind which, | though less observed, is as great a check to free, comfortable | association. There are people who never ask questions, whose | minds do not act in that direction, but work by formal statement, | not in partnership. They never seem to want to know anything | you can tell them, whether facts, or domestic details, or | opinions. They never begin a sentence with Have you been? | have you done? have you felt? do you know? do you like? do | you wish? are you glad? are you sorry? And the absence of | these feelers and approaches makes conversation with such | persons a lasting difficulty. It seems as if we had always to | obtrude our thoughts and doings upon them, and to force our | way where they do not care to have us. People ought to have a | little curiosity about one another, and we feel this without | knowing it, through the sense of effort and flatness which | oppresses us where the show of it is utterly wanting. This | posture | | of mind may be real, deep-seated unsociableness, and most | often it is so, but it may be shyness and a merely superficial | pride. Thus there are people with such an invincible reluctance | or inability to ask a question, that they will prefer walking miles | out of the right road to asking their way. They are like ghosts, | and cannot speak first or address a stranger with a form of | inquiry. | The art of drawing out others, as it is sometimes put, conveys an | idea of conceit and priggishness in its professors; but there is | such a power which can be used without offence to our self-love, | and to the great benefit of society, and this must consist in the | knowledge of the right questions to ask, and in a graceful way | of putting them. Every one's memory treasures some one who, | in his bashful youth, made him feel cleverer and brighter than | he knew himself to be; and this agreeable, flattering sensation | may always be traced to the questions which seemed to follow | one another by a sort of happy chance ~~ questions eliciting | thought and opinion, and which were just of the kind it was | pleasantest and easiest to answer. All conversation ought to | begin with question and answer, to put the interlocutors on easy, | equal terms; but this should be only the first stage. So soon as | people warm to their subject, they give their opinion or tell their | tale without asking. One might say that no man who does not | know how to ask questions, and the right questions to ask, can | have any personal influence. He may teach men in the lump, but | he will make no way with them one | | by one. The gift is a token of natural and practised sympathy; | no one can possess himself of it by trying for it just when he | wants it. We may any of us convince ourselves of this by | recalling the abortive efforts we have made upon children and | the very young ~~ a class who, if they have any shyness in them, | hate being questioned, and have a morbid terror of the operation | which is apt to extend itself to the operator. But they hate it, and | recoil from it, and shut themselves up with a more oyster-like | isolation than before, because our attempt has failed in some of | the requirements of a tentative question ~~ probably in interest in | our own inquiry, certainly in sympathetic insight into their state | of mind. It is part of all reserve, adult as well as infantile, to | make this insight hard, if not impossible, of attainment to those | not possessed of the happy knack; and the longer we know a | reserved man, the more it becomes a liberty to ask him anything. | From all this we see that questions answer to the power and | sense of touch. A rude question is a clutch or a shove; a | congenial one, opening heart and fancy, is a friendly shake of | the hand or a caress. Occasionally mind and body work on such | precisely similar impulses, that the one acts out the processes of | the other. Thus the more terrible form of questioner will address | you with eyes staring within six inches of your face, hands | holding you by the button, and with other manipulations exactly | answering to his concurrent intrusion on your freedom and | privacy of thought. However, more people understand the | sacred rights of | | person than of mind, though an attention to the analogy | between the two might furnish rules as to the mode of approach, | regulating its nearness according to the measure of congeniality | and the privileges of acquaintance. | | | | | WHAT is that thing which everybody remembers, which in the most | grateful of us outlives all benefits and overtops all services? How | may a man construct himself a niche in every mind, connect undying | associations with his name, haunt innumerable memories, make | himself a household word, point a moral, and become a standing | illustration? How may he get himself thought of and talked of most | lastingly and surely? The answer is really too obvious. Simply by | cultivating the art of snubbing, or, in favoured instances, by merely | withdrawing all checks on a natural bias and yielding to the dictates | of an inborn acidity. It is an old word, and was very appropriately | used in other days to express the withering action of the east wind; | but we make no apology for using it in its modern and more familiar | sense, as a social blight, as nipping our budding joys, and breathing | its cold blast on human jollity. And yet what is a snub, after all, that | it should brand itself so indelibly? Why should we be more | | vulnerable to its attacks than to more formidable thrusts? If it were | anything very seriously touching character or credit, it would not go | by that name. The word affects to be humorous, and the wound is | assumed to be slight, and men are not unused to plain speaking: they | acquiesce in the rights of authority in others; and youth, which is | especially sensitive to snubs ~~ which experiences all the fever fit of | shame at being merely told to mind its own business ~~ makes | comparatively small account of more serious censure, and indulges | in a playful nomenclature for the graver forms of reproof. How does | it give more pain than many a heavy rebuke from quarters whose | displeasure is serious, considering that the man who snubs does not | primarily mean to give pain at all? | | There are people who are conscious and proud of the faculty of | giving pain, who have a morbid appetite for making people uneasy | about them, to whom a comfortable person is an eyesore. They feel | the promptings of an impulse akin to that which made the Roman | Emperor, seeing a fat and jovial senator enjoying himself in the | amphitheatre, bid his attendants put a sword in that man's hand and | make him fight a lion; and which stirs in the domestic tyrant ~~ | | | but there need be nothing cruel in the man who snubs. It is good sort | of people who are tempted to it ~~ honest, sincere men, who have a | notion of doing their friends | | good, of disabusing them summarily of their faults, and shaking | them out of follies and mistakes; as when Dr Johnson, the great | master of the art, turned upon one of his flatterers: | They go right at the offence against taste, sense, or | propriety, as it may be, and have a confidence in their way of putting | things so as to confound and convince the sinner at a stroke. They | are alive to two things, the matter to be exposed and put down, and | their aptitude for the work. The feelings of their friend are the only | part of the question not taken into account, which, however, happen | to be dearer to the patient than either his friend's perspicacity or | abstract truth, even though there existed no difference of opinion all | this latter point. | | When we endeavour to analyse it, the immediate effect of a snub is | to induce a feeling of deprivation and exposure. Its physical | sensation is like the sudden loss of a garment, and the consequent | rush of cold; and we do in fact lose, in the surprise, the snug | covering of our usual self-respect. We are dependent creatures. We | are apt, on the instant of others not respecting us, to feel ourselves | not respectable, small, inferior, incompetent, unable to hold our | own; and hence the main annoyance. That which predominates in a | snub is the pressing difficulty of how to take it. We are caught at | unawares without our weapons. There are assaults and aggressions | of a nature to rouse our courage and to quicken our powers, which | call for and suggest an answer, which may be resented | | on the spot without injury to our dignity; but this is not one of them. | All that can be done generally under a snub ~~ all, at least, that we | actually do ~~ is to pull-up suddenly with an inner blank sense of | tingling, a doubt as to where we are, a confused feeling of having the | worst of it, which our instinct teaches us to keep to ourselves as | much as possible. For it must be noted that a snub is of necessity a | sudden blow, given when we are at a disadvantage, careless, and at | ease in the security of social intercourse. Social intercourse takes | sympathy for granted. It assumes one general genial sentiment, a | disposition to follow a lead, to pursue subjects in the spirit in which | they are started. A snub is a check, a blank, it is a curtain suddenly | drawn down, it is pulling-up against a dead-wall, it is cold | obstruction and recoil. Either the snubber has authority on his side, | and we have laid ourselves open by some inadvertence, by a | misplaced trust in his condescension ~~ and we have seen parents | painfully snub their children in this sort, first allowing them | liberties, then stopping them with a harsh check in mid-career of | spirits, and this in the presence of strangers ~~ or perhaps we have | given way to enthusiasm, and are met by ridicule; or we have made | a confidence which we think tender, and it is received with | indifference; or we tell a story, and are asked for the point of it; or | we are given to understand that we are mistaken where we have | assumed ourselves well informed; or our taste is coolly set at naught; | or we talk, and are reminded we are prosy; or we are brought | face-to-face with our | | ignorance in a way to make us feel it most keenly. The strength of a | snub lies in the sudden apprehension that we have committed | ourselves, and a consequent painful sense of insignificance-that | there is somebody quite close to us, regardless of our feelings, | looking down on us, and ostentatiously unsympathising. This is an | elaborate description of perhaps a momentary sensation following | on an encounter probably as short, after which each party may seem | to pursue his way unconscious; but in human affairs time is not the | measure of importance, and one of the two at least treasures a | memory of it in his heart bearing no proportion whatever to the time | it took in acting. | | Perfectly collected and self-satisfied persons are impervious to | snubs. Sam Weller is represented as receiving one from his master | (we need not say well merited) with perfect smiling serenity. So are | the happy few gifted with the power of repartee and rejoinder, who | may be called social debaters, whose glory is an emergency, who | can collect their powers on the instant, and | with usury. When M. Scribe, according to the newspaper story, | answered the millionaire who wanted him to lend him the use of his | genius for a consideration, that it was contrary to Scripture for a | horse (so he wrote it) and an ass to plough together, it was a | perfectly fair snub. The man deserved anything he got; but he must | have felt triumph rather than mortification when, on the spur of the | moment, he could demand what right had M. Scribe to call him a | horse. But these cases are too | | few to be taken into account, and the practised snubber has generally | the game in his own hand, and secures a victory. If morals are his | forte, he will have demonstrated how much more prompt are his | moral instincts than our own, how quick he is to discover the right | which our dulled perceptions or stolid selfishness had missed. If his | line is intellectual, he will have reminded us of our illogical habits of | thought and our bounded views compared with his keen intelligence | and clear judgment. If life awl manners are his care, he will have | convicted us of mistakes, awkwardnesses, solecisms; if information | and general knowledge, he will have succeeded in impressing us | with a sense of our deficiencies; if taste, he will take care to show us | that there is nothing he values so slightly as our opinion. | | That natural human sensitiveness is constantly lost sight of by quick | and clever people, is clear even from fiction. In the dialogue of most | novels, we find snubs which could not be inflicted in real intercourse | without bringing all intercourse to an end. All historical | conversations professing to have actually taken place ~~ from | Canute's reproof to his courtiers to the | quoted by Macaulay | ~~ foster the delusion that mankind will stand wounds to their | self-love which they will not stand; and the snubbers may thus be | tempted to try experiments which, in spite of momentary triumphs, | end in their own real defeat. There are men exemplary in all the | duties of life who never pass a day without | | snubbing somebody ~~ their wives, of course (natural victims, used | to be told that they say nothing and do nothing right), their children, | their servants, their underlings, their acquaintances, their associates. | Every day something has passed their lips which has acted like a | blow at the time, and worked on the recollection like a blister, which | has been repeated with querulous soreness and been passed on to the | world as a fresh trait of character, which has added to the growing | barrier which daily rises between the man and his species. Not that | we can cut him ~~ we do not even wish to do so. All the ceremonies | of friendly intercourse continue to pass between us; there is no | reason they should ever be left off. But at every encounter he gets | shoved farther and farther away from our secrets. One by one he | loses the key to the hearts of his friends, who stand on the defensive, | keep watch, shut themselves up in his presence with instinctive | caution, ti1l we doubt not he often in his inner heart wonders at his | own isolation. For our part we are sincerely sorry for him; and we | are so conscious besides that men may have the habit without | knowing it, that we would offer one general counsel ~~ never under | any temptation to practise a talent for setting down on people worth | caring for. Risk a good deal, take a circuitous route, leave good | advice unsaid, or said in less trenchant telling fashion, bear | irritations, nuisances, what not, rather than inflict any sudden wound | on your friend's self-love. Do not put him, on your behalf, on the | duty of Christian forgiveness. Allow him to rest in some ignorance | of your | | opinion, even though he may believe it more to his advantage than it | happens to be. Submit to be incomplete; sacrifice the pleasure of | being sharp and acute at his expense; for it is very certain that he | will not like you the better, and very unlikely also that he should | himself be the better, for your having made | him feel like, and perhaps look like, a fool. If he is often put under | the apprehension of it, the least that can be expected of him is, that | he will eschew your confidence, and carefully keep on the windy | side of intimacy. | | Here lies the secret of so many charges of ingratitude, and benefits | forgotten, of unrequited, unvalued sacrifices. Not that a few, or even | a series, of ill-considered unpalatable words ought to counterbalance | real services, but that they put human nature to a strain which too | severely tests its weak points. And there is this to be said ~~ that | contempt, of all things the hardest to bear, is, if we go to the bottom | of it, the motive force of most snubs. The practice is certainly | incompatible with a respectful habit of mind. Our friend is in a hurry | to tell us that our judgment is worth nothing, that our expression of it | must be stopped, that we, or something about us, must be put down. | As we think over the matter, the examples that first occur come from | contemptuous minds ~~ men without deference, who are | accustomed to lean upon themselves, who do not expect to find | much in other people. We do not find them appealing to others, or | wishing to know their thoughts, or willing to follow out their | speculations, or listening to their suggestions. They live and think | alone, impatient | | of interference and interruption, and nourish some notion of | themselves which practically, though it may not take the form of | vulgar arrogance and vanity, sets them above the possibility of | benefit from the crude, unformed, untaught intelligences around | them. Indeed, it is their impatience of other men's ideas and | conclusions which leads them to commit themselves. | | And it is to be observed that such men never do see others at their | best. A person of ordinary modesty, not gifted with self-reliance, not | confident of his position, cannot show himself to advantage under | such circumstances; and thus men are encouraged in their self-esteem | by the consequences of their own ungraciousness. Nobody is | quite himself before them unless he is also past the possibility of an | open show of contempt, though even this immunity depends on the | rank of the snubber. The Duke of Wellington could tell an earl, his | colleague, | and when wit and learning were rank, Warburton and | Swift could and did snub all the world. If our remarks lack the | pungency of appropriate illustration, it is not because apt examples | do not crowd upon us. We could fill columns with them ~~ the | collegiate, the social, the domestic ~~ all of them very much to the | purpose, and some very amusing; but, as we have said, these are just | the things people never forget. Disguise them as we would, they | would be traced to their right source, and the sanctities of private life | must be respected, though our disquisition lose half its value, and all | its liveliness, by the sacrifice. | | | | | <"Essays on Social Subjects"> | | WE have read a great deal about the art of conversation, but the | conversation which does its work best ~~ which fulfils the two | requirements of

"promoting kindness"

and

| "unburdening a man's mind"

~~ is no art at all. It is an | exercise ~~ an unconscious relaxation, like a walk or a scamper. | If all the world took to cultivating their conversational powers, we | believe society would become insufferable; but yet a vast number | of persons would be the better for taking more pleasure in talking | and hearing others talk, and society would be proportionably the | gainer. It is very proper, where people make talking the work of | their lives, that they should reduce it to rules; and it is pleasant | now and then to be admitted into some crack circle, to share the |

"very superior occasion "

of the meeting of two wits, | to listen to some great gun, and to air our poor talents in grand | company. But it takes a good deal out of us. Where there has | been the feast of reason at breakfast, we are not fit for a great | deal the rest of the day. Fancy a man, with | | work of his own to do, a guest at those interminable morning | sittings at Coppet, devoted to literary and philosophic topics, | where Madaine de Stael was sublime in her filial piety,

| "committing some voluntary mistake,"

that her father | might have the victory; or even habitually assisting at those | gladiatorial contests which Dr Johnson thought alone worthy of | the title of conversation ~~ literal fights, in which he must either | conquer or die. For the real purposes of intercourse, less | pretentious utterances are far better, where thought is worked out | under the irregularities of unprofessional talkers, with all their | prolixities, digressions, inaccuracies, hesitations, habits, and | tricks. Our own mind is in a posture of greater independence. We | can give and take ~~ we can commit a blunder or make a random | shot without subsequent self-torment ~~ we can hold our own. It | must weaken the mind to give itself up out of its own keeping in | helpless pursuit of another's speculations; yet the great | converser's end is foiled if he does not carry his hearers with | him; and where in self-defence the attention mutinies and we | return to the snuggery of our own thoughts, it is not done | without a sense of wasting opportunities. If, on the other hand, | we are stimulated by so much eloquence and conspicuous success, | and should by chance be fired with the ambition to be a show | talker, talking would still further recede from its office of | relaxation, and turn into an arena for display. It was from no | exceptional vanity in the circle he described, but an inevitable | consequence of great wits being pitted against each other, that | Marmontel | | could give so unpleasing a picture of the most brilliant | conversations of his day: ~~ | he says, | | This all sounds small and vain enough, but neither smaller nor | vainer than the majority of men would be if so tried. When | talking is lifted out of its easy footing, it is subject to different laws | altogether ~~ laws which tell a tale. It is observable that, in the | very high places of wit and perfect expression, where every word is | worth hearing, the impatience of prolonged enforced attention is | keenest. The conversation that excites, naturally has this effect. | We see constantly, in circles that are not brilliant, that many | people are content to be silently attentive when they are not | interested, who will not | | allow a speaker to finish his sentence when he hits upon a topic | they care for, and treats it successfully. Their sign of sympathy | and, approval is interruption. So people do wisely to set | themselves rules like the self-denying Frenchman and Swift, who | himself never spoke more than a minute at a time, and thus laid | down his principles on the subject: ~~ | | These are excellent rules for company talk, but they would | never teach people to talk well in company. For this there must | have been habits of free-and-easy utterance, taking time very little | into the account, more intent on bringing out thought than on the | way it is brought out. And a man must have lived with intimates | no less unscrupulously eager with their views. There must have | been early felt the relief, delight, nay exultation, of giving voice | to opinion and feeling, for a person to acquire the | self-confidence and practice necessary to carry weight in general | society. But this applies to leading spirits; whereas all have the | gift of speech, and we believe ought to apply themselves to use | it rather than to repress it. Talking, with most people, is | indispensable to acquaint them with themselves, to show them the | scope of their powers, the tendency of their | | habits and thoughts. Moreover, it is a wonderfully cheering and | invigorating exercise. It is one of the secrets of longevity, from | the glow in which it keeps body and mind. Many people keep | themselves alive by talking. This may not recommend the | practice to those who feel it their own function and fate to be | listeners; but old men who talk, even with all the accidents of | old age upon them, are a great gain to society, and set off the | decline of existence in a far more cheering and comfortable light | than those do who doze away their last hours in the | chimney-corner. There was Mr Craddock, the octogenarian, who had | known all the wits from Warburton downwards, and literally | lived upon his memories. Talk was his elixir vitae. | | but nevertheless he lived | to eighty-five, always happy and always telling anecdotes. And | we all of us know brisk old gentlemen whose occupation is | repeating to the present generation what they have seen, heard, | and done in a past one. Perhaps they are prosy, and indefinitely | repeat themselves; but these aged talkers have a real work to do. | They are the keepers and handers-on of tradition. They bring us | nearer to the past, and connect remote periods with one another. | Each generation does well to make much of these Nestors ~~ to | salute them with gracious respect; ~~ | | And yet it requires courage in a man to own himself | | fond of talking. Our age is unusually supercilious towards the | instinct of expression. It is the thing to prefer our own ideas and | pursuits to conversation. Reading has, indeed, always been the | one all-powerful rival to talk, with those minds which are | especially formed to treat conversation as an art, to give it point, | and make it the expression of intellect; but modern literature | extends its range by making less and less demands on the reader, | till the most ordinary sustained conversation is the greater | intellectual effort of the two. The passion for reading in many | young people, though an excellent thing in reason, is often a | blind and paralysing instinct, a lazy indulgence, a mere bondage | to type which cuts them off from half the important influences | of their age. The eye fastens on a printed page, the mind | helplessly pursues whatever comes to it under this guise, and | eye and ear are dead and impervious to every other call. There | is such bondage to a habit, such mere material craving, in some | persons' reading, as implies a mind not so much anxious for | knowledge, or even amusement, as set against all knowledge | and amusement that does not come to it in the received method | ~~ that calls for independent effort and the employment of | unpractised faculties. Those who will only learn through books, | who would rather open any page than look into intelligent eyes, | to whom cheerful voices and animated discussion are a simple | interruption to the preoccupied attention, are leaving things | unlearnt which would serve them beyond all comparison in | | have hit upon by chance ~~ things which would unchain their | faculties at the age when habits of observation must be acquired | if they are to be possessed at all, and when the art of expression, | command of words, an easy range of subjects and light handling | of them, should all exist in the germ. Of course all clever boys | have fits of reading in which they care for nothing else; but | systematically bookish boys developing into bookish men (as | they used to be called) can never make the use they ought of | their acquirements by talking well, and so improving and | enriching the general tone of thought. Thus, in many circles, the | talk is all left in ill-informed or frivolous hands. | But our present concern is not so much with the useful as the | pleasant. We are arguing for the beneficent effects of a | reasonable love of talking on the talker; and therefore, if | pertinacious reading were shown to contribute most lastingly to a | man's pleasure, our plea would break down. This is the real | question. For, after all, who can look back without yearning, | sorrowful tenderness to the early passion for books ~~ the sweet | lover-like association with them in corners, by firelight, | everywhere, anywhere, in pleasant shady places, by night or by | day, in twilight or dawn, in any posture, at any time, by any | light? But ~~ and here is the rub ~~ suddenly, some day, when | we least think it, there is interposed a shadow, which, slight | though it be, heralds a break between us and our first love. A | dimness, faint and uncertain, passes between us and the page | we read. Is it giddiness, indigestion, weariness? The appearance | | passes off, and we forget our misgiving; but again there is a | mistiness and that odd flicker; by chance our hand drops, and | the book with it. We see better ~~ the dimness goes off ~~ but | our eyes ache. Can it really be that our focus of sight is | changing ~~ has changed? A slight shudder passes through us. | Are we, so young, so fresh in all our feelings, henceforth to hold | our paper at arm's length like the old fogies in "Punch"? And in | the mere imagination there is sown the first seed of disunion | between us and the passion of our youth. We probably keep our | suspicions to ourselves. This is but a foretaste; and what it | fore-tells is of course still in remotest distance. But as all downward | careers are rapid, so, from this first discovery of weakness to | positive difficulties with small print ~~ except under the most | friendly circumstances ~~ there seems but a step. Reluctantly, | we make our sad way to the optician's ~~ not, however, without | faint hopes that the obscuration may be only temporary and | accidental. But these are rudely dispelled. The man has a coarse | pleasure in unmasking illusion. He looks at us, sees apparently | no discrepancy between us and our case, and thinks it the most | natural thing in the world that we should want glasses. He tests | us by a printed page which we are pleased to show him presents | no difficulties, but he severely points to the numerals as the | only criterion. We are fain to confess that the threes and fives | dance into a common likeness. He

"thought so,"

and | we leave his shop a sadder and a wiser man, with a pair of | spectacles in our pocket and | | a double eye-glass suspended from our neck, thankful that | there are such helps to failing vision, but regarding our new | acquisitions as the fetters they undoubtedly are. This is an epoch. | Our independence, our freedom, our youth is gone. This is | travelling farther from the east with a vengeance. What is that | about the three warnings? But we have positively nothing in | common with old Dobson. It must be premature. A twinge of | conscience supervenes. Who knows but we may have lost the | freshness of our eyesight in reviewing? | Henceforth, reading is not what it was. We read what we have | to read, as before, but there is no more sweet unrestraint. It is | astonishing how many books don't seem worth reading if you | have to put on glasses and change your seat to read them. Our | habits alter. Once we

"read like a Turk,"

voraciously, | indiscriminately; now a third party, in the shape of an intrusive | but indispensable bit of glass, breaks in upon the old | tete-a-tete. We own that books can never again be what they | have been. | | But in the meanwhile, away from our books, things look | precisely as they always did. No change has come over man or | landscape; the near and the distant are as sunny clear as ever; | every general effect, every detail, is what it was before. If there | were no such thing as print, we should know nothing about a | change. Our friend's smile tells as much as it ever did. The | | glance is as keen, every nicety of expression as fully caught, as | it ever was. We suspect that this is a period that turns a good | many into more conversible beings than they have yet thought | it worth while to be. We are, in fact, at the age when good | talkers are at their best. But to talk fairly well is matter of | practice and habit, not to be taken up because there is nothing better | to do with our leisure time. The man is fortunate, and the good | fortune extends to his friends, who has not to teach himself to | talk when it is hard to learn anything new. Yet many a diffuse | and dry elderly gentleman seems very much in this predicament. | Age is charged with making men prosy. It may be because they | have so much more time on their hands, and no stores of general | observation to use it upon; stores acquired before we drift into | the helpless period of simple use and acquiescence. Conversation | is designed to be the one long-lasting never-failing amusement | of mankind. It is the pleasure that sets in earliest, outlives all | vicissitudes, and continues ours when we can enjoy nothing else. | If, then, talking is the great resource, it is well to train ourselves, | while self-education is still possible, to talk agreeably, so that the | relaxation of the speaker may not be a selfish one, nor | purchased, as it too often is, at the expense of his hearers. | | | | | <"ESSAYS ON SOCIAL SUBJECTS"> | | WE may be intimate with people, we may have a hundred points | in common with them, experience may have taught us to | defer to their superior knowledge and quicker perception, and | yet we may be surprised at last to find ourselves on unknown | ground when we come to talk with them about books. It is not | that there is a mere difference of taste and of views, for the | foregone knowledge of each other's minds will have prepared | both parties for some divergence. The surprise comes with the | discovery that our friend stands in an unexpected relation to | the books he reads ~~ that his mind does not work upon | books as we know it to do upon life and nature, nor do his | intellectual powers find in them the same exercise or | nourishment which more genial matter supplies; and we are | thus awakened to the defective sympathy which exists between | certain minds and books. If authors came before such persons in | bodily shape, acting and talking, their merits, faults, and | peculiarities would be met by a practised discernment; | | but, putting themselves into books, they are hid and disguised | altogether. The author is not seen at all, and his work makes | but a vague or an exaggerated or a false impression. In some | way or other it is not entered into. | It is so much the thing now for | everyone in general society to be able to talk about the | books of the day with an air of discrimination, and to use the | language of praise and censure in a form implying some | comprehension of the relation between a writer and his book, | that one might sometimes suppose that everybody was critical, | and knew not only what makes a book good or bad, but how | books grow out of an author's mind; so easily and | unconsciously do we all repeat what we hear, fall into the vein | of thought most familiar to our ears, and say what we are | expected to say. But if we get into a set not even professing to | be literary, and hear people talk of books whose intellectual | activities have gone out in another line ~~ whether a | philanthropic, religious, political, domestic, or pleasure-taking | direction ~~ so that society has given them no hints of what | they are to say and think of the works that come in their way, | it soon becomes apparent that the critical faculty, even in its | most elementary undeveloped stage, is by no means universal. | There are still a great many persons, some of them very clever | ones, in this reading age, who are perfectly in the dark as to | how books are written, who read them without any curiosity | concerning their authorship; who regard them as things for | which nobody is responsible; who | | will go through the contents of a circulating library with no | more inquiry how the books came there than how the flints | by the wayside came to be what and where they are. Not only | may people who really like reading be in this state of mind, | but many of the greatest readers, if we judge by the number | of pages turned over in a day or year, are so. If they have not | heard others talk, they have nothing to say. In their natural | unaffected state, they have no inkling of the sort of thing | expected from them. The book does not rank in their minds | among human efforts, nor has in it the interest of human | labour and achievement. A vast proportion of novel-readers | care less to know who wrote the books they read, than to | know the shops that have supplied the food they eat and the | clothes they wear. | We take it to be inseparable from the attitude of criticism to | trace the thing that interests us to some agent ~~ to connect it, | if possible, with the mind that wrought it out. The critic | cannot listen to music in a comfortable frame till he knows | something about the composer. The composition must be | characteristic of some combination of heart and intellect, it | must be seasoned with humanity, it must have a history, before | he can praise or blame, or give himself up to its influences | with perfect satisfaction. We need not ask now why it is so, as | we are concerned with those who recognise no such needs or | impulses; indeed, who would consider it a presumption on | their part to assume the critical posture. Persons ~~ and we | have noticed this | | particularly in women ~~ who say very distinctly that they | hate and detest a book, would feel it to be conceited to | analyse it and seek out the reason why. To identify a man | with his book, to take him to task, to measure the scale of his | powers, to pronounce upon his deficiencies and errors, would | seem to them, a more arrogant proceeding than summarily to | condemn in the lump so many pages of printed matter, in | whatever terms of contumely and disparagement. If they have | humour, they will be amusing in their evasions and | disclaimers; but a discussion of any nicety as to the grounds | and causes of their condemnation is quite out of their line, | and they cannot be drawn into it. We see this sometimes even | in those who assume the place of the critic, and affect his | office. Many a review is simply a statement of liking and | disliking, without reason alleged or grounds given. The book | is merely a peg for remarks more or less relevant. Whenever | Sydney Smith criticised, it was in this vein. Thus he decided | that "Granby" must be a good novel because it produced | certain effects upon the reader ~~ because it made him too | late in dressing for dinner, impatient, inattentive, and | incapable (while it lasted) of reading Hallam's "Middle Ages," | or extracting the root of an impossible quantity; but the causes | that made "Granby" interesting to him, and Hallam's "Middle | Ages" dull, he did not care to inquire into. He let his reader | know, in a diverting way, that one book suited his turn and | fancy, and that another did not; but he never committed | himself to a reason. And no doubt such an | | opinion from a superior man is better worth having than the | careful criticisms of a small pedantic mind; but it is not | criticism, and he who likes and dislikes on deliberate | conscious grounds has a faculty which the other is without, | and which, in spite of the glib-ness with which coteries | discuss books, is wanting to a vast number of minds. Even a | child, if it possesses the critical faculty, unconsciously regards | a book as a work of art, and distinguishes between the subject | and the performance, which a good many persons never do as | long as they live. And this difference will largely influence | the choice of books. For instance, a boy of twelve meets with | Addison's "Spectator." If he has the gift of recognising an | author when he comes in the way of one ~~ if he can be so far | caught by justness of thought, delicacy of humour, and | eloquence and grace of expression that these will secure | attention and interest apart from the immediate attraction of | the subject ~~ then he is an embryo critic; and though, of | course, it does not do to draw an opposite conclusion from | the fact that at an early age the whole thing is alien to him, | and takes no hold on thought or fancy, yet, in so far as he | manifests distaste for a book written in a charming style and | perfect in its way, he gives no promise of future discernment in | the matter of execution. It is true that criticism should | exercise itself on the nature and fitness of the subject as well | as on the way in which it is worked out, yet the execution is | the more common field for its exercise. Thus it is generally | for want of the critical faculty that the crowd | | in a picture-gallery gathers round the most showy and | sentimental subjects, and passes by simple or homely scenes | of nature and life which are admirable for the painter's close | and imaginative rendering of them, for his having caught all | the points of truth and beauty which the subject presents to a | keen comprehensive observation, and worked them out with | the whole skill of his art. | Still we have a respect for all people who boldly | admire what pleases them: it is a finer position than | waiting to be told what they are to like; and it is | therefore pleasant and instructive to see an ardent un | critical mind, endowed with perpetual youth, in | unsophisticated action. This may be best seen, where books | are concerned, when eyes and attention are glued to the | pages of a novel. The novel is more likely than not to | be, in the judgment of critics, a very bad one ~~ probably | beneath criticism, except that it tells a story with at | least an affectation of force and spirit. It is almost | necessary that it should be at variance with the actual | experience of the reader ~~ for what is familiar is mistaken | for commonplace ~~ and that the plot should be | worked out in defiance of the laws of probability; or | there will be a sense of flatness, triviality, or deficiency | of moral. Nevertheless, under these conditions, given | a proper amount of incident, the reader is rapt into an | illusion of reality far beyond what the critic is capable | of who never quite forgets that he is engaged upon | somebody's performance. The question of truth and | nature can find no place when the characters are never | | regarded as an author's creations, but as so many real actors | and sufferers, to be judged by the reader's moral and | intellectual standard, and not by the test of consistency to a | preconceived ideal. Even the anger of simple readers of this | sort never reaches the author, but is all expended on the | puppets which his pen has set in motion. All this might seem | to be the best and highest praise, but that, in fact, it is never | bestowed on the highest desert. There is always something in | a capital performance which exempts it from this ruder form | of appreciation; and this something is probably a close | representation of familiar life, so full and true that the reader | can see no merit in it, being possessed by the notion that what | everybody may see everybody does see, and therefore | everybody might draw if he took the trouble ~~ not to add | that it is so dull to meet in a book precisely the same | company we see every day. We have heard readers of this | class regret that there is so much that is

"low"

in | Walter Scott. They take no interest in "Adam Bede," because | the people are common, and talk a dialect; and they despise | Miss Austen's nice variety of fools because they are so foolish, | and are therefore unworthy an author's pains. In fact, it is a | distinct class of minds altogether that value a book because | the writer undertakes to do a thing, and does it well ~~ | because its pages show an observation more than commonly | acute, exercised on real life and everyday humanity. The | majority neither care for the study itself nor for the | performance. It is no more amusing to them to be let into the | hidden sources | | of folly, selfishness, and prejudice than to be subject to the real | manifestations of these qualities. A character does not mean | with them anything natural or probable, but an agency to work | out the plot in an exciting way. They never think of the | execution, and are no judges of it, except as everybody is a | judge whether a scene is tame or forcible; for mere dulness is | an intelligible quality to all the world. If ever a work of | genius is admitted into these readers' highest favour, it will be | because it is tinctured by mannerisms and extravagance which | effectually remove it from the world they know and the life of | their own experience. | But, critical or not, these absorbed and simple readers are vastly | superior in the higher forms of intelligence to the vulgar | notion of a critic, which simply means a fault-finder ~~ to the | man whom nothing pleases, who only realises an author as | something to be worried, and who sets himself to pick holes | and turn every thought and sentence the wrong side out. | Some fall into this habit from satiety. They have lost the | power of reading, from overwork, or fretfulness, and general | failure of sympathy. But it is more commonly the mark of a | narrow sharpness puffed into conceit by a defective education | ~~ the sharpness that can hit upon blemishes, but is blind to | merits and beauties, and never forgets itself so far as to be | lost in a new view or thought, or carried away by another | man's imagination. Next to this sour, one-sided form of | popular criticism comes the domestic and prejudiced, where | one mind, really or professedly critical, rules the house-hold, | | and all contentedly bow to one dictum. Nothing shows more | the rarity of a real, independent, critical exercise of mind than | the docility with which a dozen people will take all their | opinions of books, for praise or blame, from one; adopting or | renouncing poets, historians, novelists without a question, and | regulating their interest at the word of command. And one | sees this amongst professed lovers of books, who can quote | Tennyson or Wordsworth according as either poet occupies | the niche of honour, and who will have reasons for their | preference which might pass for the results of thought, only | that every word and turn can be traced to a dictator. The ears | of one whole circle will be charmed with the march of | Macaulay's or Kinglake's sentences, while those of another | will detect mannerism in every line. One set will have | pronounced "Hiawatha" an insult to the public understanding, | while another will have welcomed it as a new sensation; and | we might wonder at the unanimity in each case till experience | shows us who gives the cue, and we perceive that each | judgment instinctively suspends its action till the voice has | spoken ~~ just as, years back, before they got used to such | things, the people of Hereford waited to know whether they | had felt the shock of an earthquake till the "Times" arrived | next morning. When these obedient followers own at all a | wilful or eccentric leadership, it is wonderful what names | become household words ~~ what out-of-the-way, or | commonplace, or elsewhere-forgotten authors are the | authorities to whom all bow. Nor does this deference belong | only to half-taught, | | out-of-the-world societies, though there it is seen in its | purest simplicity. There is no set so highly trained but it | broadly betrays the uncritical temper in its readiness to | accept another's judgment, and its submission of | understanding, taste, and feeling to another's dictation or to a | prejudice. Thus, at Lord Holland's, it used to be the fashion to | cry down Sir Walter Scott. When the outer world was | entranced by his genius, a promiscuous crowd of visitors | took one and the same line of depreciation towards "Guy | Mannering," or "Ivanhoe," or whatever it might be, till the | most sturdy wit of the company, whose sensations were not | quite under the same control, was fain to utter his protest: ~~ | | | Blind faith in authors, as such, is another form of the | uncritical temper. There are people who think an author is an | author, and look up to him as such, irrespective of his book. | We meet with them sometimes, and we read of them much | oftener, for perhaps this amiable and engaging weakness is a | little dying out. Of course the attitude of worship is | incompatible with criticism. When once we sit in judgment | on a book and presume to determine its merits and its defects, | we realise the fact of the writer being our own flesh and blood, | not the awful image on a pedestal that an implicit faith in type | makes him. This unquestioning | | reverence is a good frame for the young, in whom conscious | criticism is often impertinent, and even odious; but it is servile | as some people manage it, bestowing it as they do on | unworthy objects, and bowing down to mere shams and the | flimsiest idols. But, as we have said, the times do not | encourage any reverence for learning and authorship that | holds the gazer aloof. We have to assert the rarity of real | critical power, or even of the critical turn of mind, against | appearances, which in well-bred circles are, we own, dead | against us. Criticism used to be a distinct profession, and the | poet only had to complain that | | But now any young lady who reads the reviews, and knows | the importance of having something to say, can do the | business with a despatch and decision which leave the critic | far behind. The only thing is that, whenever people assert | opinions with ultra readiness, we have learnt to take it as a | sign that their opinions are none of their own forming, but | borrowed straight, and probably verbatim, from somebody else. | | | | | <"ESSAYS ON SOCIAL SUBJECTS"> | | THERE can be no harm in the general belief that our convicts are | so well cared for that prison has no terrors for them, and that | they like it rather than otherwise. There is no good whatever in | fattening garotters, and if any creatures should live on bread | and water, it is they; therefore, by all means, let us have a return | to stricter rule. But we have little doubt that our well-ordered | prisons are to some of their inmates more hateful than in the old | days of lawless wretchedness. It may be questioned whether | any human being is so reduced to the condition of a brute as to | be content with duly recurring meals, especially where, by | heavy experience, the precise weight and quality of those meals | is known past the possibility of uncertainty; and to rogues and | vagabonds whose whole life has been a shirking of monotony, | an abhorrence of decent habits, and a craving for change, those | regular hours, those inevitable periods of labour, and those long | silences, must be some substantial punishment. No | | wonder they practise upon the chaplain. He is their one hope | and source of variety for the present as well as the future. Their | more naive sisters in crime, when conveyed from one prison to | another, betray the exquisite sense of contrast in even a transient | glimpse of the world from which they are shut out: ~~ crying, |

"Oh, is not this first-rate?"

as they are whirled past | shops, theatres, and placarded walls;

"and they are in | chapel now at Brixton!"

and we do not doubt that the | former life of the thief never looks more attractive than in | juxtaposition with the deadly-dull decorum of forced propriety. | Such people learn no lessons. They never look an inch before | them, but trust to their luck, and plunge headlong into that new | world that proves to them the old. Unfortunately, they can only | indulge a natural taste for change and novelty at the expense of | the community, owing to their false and exceedingly limited | range of ideas as to what that pleasurable novelty is without | which not only they, but every human being, must be miserable. | When Burton would sound the depths of melancholy, he describes | the life of one who, from the cradle to old age,

"beholds the | same still; still, still, the same, the same"

~~ who endures | perpetual monotony; and it is certain that on wise alternations | of steady uniformity with variety depend the due development | of the intellect, the expansion of the moral nature, and the | happiness of the life. The different arrangement and proportion | of these opposites mark, and probably constitute, great national | distinctions. The American may | | well differ from the Briton, though owning the same forefathers, | when the change he courts is fundamental as well as constant | ~~ when he never regards anything as settled, and, as Mr | Trollope tells us, if he cannot get along as a lawyer at Salem, he | sets up as a shoemaker at Thermopylae; or, if he fails in the | lumber line at Eleutheria, catches at an opening for a Baptist | preacher at Big Mud Creek. Entering on a new occupation every | six months, is an exhaustive search after novelty which finds no | sympathy in the British mind, which, whatever its love of | change, feels the need of an anchorage somewhere ~~ some | standing that it would be terrible to lose; though, beyond this, we | crave variety like our fellow-mortals. | Curiosity, which is the desire for new knowledge and new | experiences, is part of every sane mind. Now, of course, | education is the means by which the noblest curiosity may be | both excited and indulged. What is the pursuit of truth which | the philosophers press upon us but a search after grand and | high-flown novelties? Happy those who can gratify the craving | for the new in so sublime a field, though perhaps it would | scarcely be a comfortable world if everybody followed such a | chase. But, short of this, education alone enables men to | apprehend and relish what is new in a thousand directions. Very | few persons can receive impressions on subjects upon which | they are wholly ignorant, and on which their observation is | unpractised. This is conspicuous in such scenes as the late | International Exhibition. Not one in a hundred, we will venture | | to say, of the crowds we saw flocking there, took in a single idea | from any object to which the mind had no previous clue. All the | strangeness, novelty, and beauty were passed by ~~ were not | visible, did not reach the brain, did not even catch the sense of | the vacant, bewildered gazer. The artisan studied machinery, | the soldier looked at the guns, the rustic at the ploughs and | harrows; but they could not even see the pictures or the statuary | which were ranged before them. The women, as a rule, noticed | dress and fabrics to the utter exclusion of other things, not from | vanity or frivolity, but because these were the only matters their | training qualified them to think about. A mist hung between | them and all the art, genius, and wealth crowded round them. It | was all too strange for the mind to say of anything,

"This is | new to me"

~~ which is, in fact, comparing it with what is | old. There was no ground for a comparison. A man sent his | cook to spend the day there; the sole thing that remained on her | mind was a kitchen-range, in which she observed some | novelties of construction. The majority of all great crowds are | like the woman who emigrated to America with her husband, | and, returning after some years to her native village, was asked | what she had seen.

"I can't say,"

she replied,

"as I | see'd anything pertick'lar;"

and if she had followed | Humboldt over the world, she would have said the same. But who | can cast a stone at his neighbour on this point of intelligent | curiosity? The desire for what is new, and the power of | apprehending it, run in grooves. Nobody is inquisitive | | on all points deserving of inquiry: only the largest mind, most | thoroughly cultivated, embraces most. | But the desire for novelty and variety which possesses all minds | is not commonly associated with the notion of learning and | books, nor even with that natural curiosity which is occupied, | scarcely consciously, on whatever presents itself as striking | either in. man or nature; nor yet with that vulgar curiosity which | is the craving for new impressions from objects either unworthy | and lowering in themselves, or which do not properly come | within the scope of the observer (as old people may observe and | be curious about many things which it would be odious in | children to notice;) it is not the new things we may learn, or | observe, or pry into, but the new things that may happen to us | ~~ something connected with a turn of fortune ~~ which is most | people's idea of novelty. It is incident, adventure, new | experience. All require that something new should constantly be | presented to them; but the amount and quality of the change | depend on a hundred conditions: for the necessary stimulant of | life must vary with age, temperament, and training, as well as | with the nature of that habitual course of action with which the | variety is to come in contrast. Providential or self-chosen | monotony of existence has, of course, its novelties in proportion. | A great many lives seem to us to present no opportunities for | anything new in the daily course of them, even in the humblest | form of novelty; but those who live them do find variety | enough to distinguish one day from another. | | Something unexpected, not to be calculated on beforehand, | relieves monotony, stirs the blood, creates those little stimulants | without which we could not live, or life would become a living | death. What surprises a Trappist finds in his silent existence ~~ | what refreshing changes ~~ we do not know, but if he lives and | keeps his senses we believe he finds them; and while he is of this | earth, the diversions must be of the earth also, for he needs | them as a human being, not as a rapt etherealised intelligence. | The inhabitants of Pitcairn's Island led a regular, respectable, | industrious existence, and had enough of the necessaries of life; | but because their utter isolation diminished the chances of | change to a minimum, nobody lived to be old, and the average | length of life sank to five-and-thirty or forty. And this from the | total absence of vivifying new sensations. | There are not a few persons to whom the evening rubber brings | a good share of this indispensable change, the mild shocks and | minute surprises of each turn of luck not seldom culminating | into stirring astonishment at the caprices of fortune, that only | charmer whose infinite variety no custom can stale. Preachers | have often been severe on the pleasure the old find in cards, | confusing it with the gambler's fierce love of hazard; whereas | they are valued on a contrary principle, because cards exactly | answer their temperate demand for some renovator, and because | the stimulant is a small and clearly defined one. People who | have lived long enough in the world to know that it will not | furnish | | them with many great pleasurable excitements, who have learnt | to fear change, who have settled into habits, who have no longer | objects for continuous stir of the affections, and are perforce | lookers-on where they were once actors ~~ good elderly folks | who don't happen to be intellectual, or who have not eyes for all | the good books pressed upon them, and who cannot expect to | keep about them a buzz of that rarest of all things, brilliant, | amusing, or even edifying conversation ~~ must surely be allowed | to find some of their diversion (which means their variety) in such | new combinations as chance and accident permit to their | contracted field of observation, and of which all games | involving chance are the type. | A few new faces, a few unexpected classifications of the old ones, | familiar incidents and characters in fresh combinations ~~ these | suit the natural desire for something new, that stays with men to | the last, in spite of habit, and a memory living in the past, and | dread of change in their own person; though this passive variety | is utterly inadequate to satisfy the eager expectation of youth. | For, however demure, sedate, and apparently unimpassioned the | young may seem to be, their idea of novelty is necessarily quite | distinct from that of their elders. The young regard nothing as | real change, nothing as deserving the name of excitement, that | has not some reference, however indirect, to material changes in | themselves. They care for nothing new unless they may have a | part in it, and unless it brings the notion, however unconsciously, | of affecting their future. | | Society is to them the scene wherein their fate lies. Everything | is full of possibilities for them. All sorts of great changes, new | openings of life, may happen to them. Every journey is fraught | with expectation, every new acquaintance may be a life affair, | every new year is big with promise. Honours, fame, wealth, | authorship, successful love ~~ youth is candidate for them all. | Thus, small varieties that can have no ulterior consequences, | such as satisfy the elderly lookers-on, though necessary, too, in | their way, are treated with contempt by such as are entering upon | life, if proposed as specimens of what it has to offer of new and | strange. Between these two extremes stands middle life, not yet | regarding the changing aspects of existence as varied pictures | passing before the eyes, but as a scene of action; yet averse to | fundamental novelties, and holding to established place and | habits; so that a man's notion of desirable change is now | advance in the line he has chosen. Uncertainty has lost its charm, | and is a thing to be feared. | The force of habit, so powerful in the middle life and old age not | only of individuals but communities, is of course the great | hindrance to this natural sympathy with what is new and | unaccustomed. Those are wise who resist its encroachments so | far at least as always to give a hearing to fresh ideas. It is this | wisdom that makes some old people such pictures of an | unprejudiced, green old age. We are young so long as we keep | open the inlets to new impressions; and the more numerous | these are, the more vigorous are both mind and spirits. | | But, as a fact, people are very apt to be proud of quite the | contrary state of mind. It is constantly thought a very fine thing | to be wholly independent of intercourse with, and news from, | the outer world. Mrs Delaney mentioned it with complacency | that at her friend the Duke of Portland's the newspapers were | left unfolded from morning till night; and there are people who | like to say the same thing now. They think it necessarily | implies occupation of more importance, and a certain-weighty | and anti-frivolous character. The mother to whom the absorbing | novelty of the week is baby's first tooth, feels herself to be | higher in the scale than her neighbour who is up in the | American war, skims the debates, and is sensible of a freshened | existence in the prospect of some social gathering where eye | and ear have a chance of being exercised on new ground. And yet | this is a far healthier condition, and she is in less danger of | those frenzies of excitement about nothing that a stifled natural | craving for variety is apt to plunge into. How many families | suffer under the morbid caution against new impressions ~~ | under the notion that ignorance is innocence and domesticity, | and that to learn to talk of and to care for dull things is a virtue! | reminding us of those seven daughters we have read of trained on | this principle, who severally related to their father, with fullest | detail, as the treasured event of the week, that the pig had got | into the garden. Yet probably this is a better extreme than that | of forcing variety upon the young. It is better, no doubt, for | both feeling and fancy that the front door-bell should | | not be rung once a-week ~~ as may often happen in a country | parsonage ~~ than that a child should be crammed with new things | before it can digest them. There are persons who from infancy | have been so guarded from dulness and kept in such constant | excitement, that observation ceases to work because there is | nothing to attract it. In the extreme of such a life, affections can | have no growth, and associations are impossible; and a life | without associations must also be without thought. We are told of | a religious fraternity in Thibet whose members disown a fixed | dwelling. Any tent gives them lodging for a night, and every | morning they wander forth they neither know nor care whither. | Their life is one of perpetual change. They never retread the | same ground, they never see again the faces of their entertainers | of the night before. Nothing ever is, or has been, familiar to them. | There are lives of seeming excitement and variety, under our | own observation, that are not so very unlike this, as far as all | uses of feeling, memory, and reflection are concerned. | Incapacitated for new impressions, these are the people who crave for | new sensations ~~ for some irresistible assault on nerves and | senses that shall give them perforce a new experience. | Restlessness and a feverish desire for change are not, however, | national vices with us. People who are unappeasable in their | demand for what the world is not various enough to supply | may even have a use in counteracting that selfish, respectable | contentment with the humdrum ~~ requiring that everybody | else should | | be content also ~~ which is perhaps the more common extreme; | and may force men to see something more of the needs of | human nature than they perhaps quite care to know. It is, in fact, | consolatory to see what a compensation for a hundred wants a | life of cheerful change offers. A life of new images and new | impressions, though of the humblest and least exciting sort ~~ a | life where no strain of sadness can keep its hold undisturbed, | where the outer world in all its shifting variety of incident and | picture is always presenting matter for speculation and inquiry, | ~~ such a life, whatever its privations, is a happy one. It is | happier for most men than a life which has everything that the | other wants, but which fails in this one ingredient. Lots in life | are more equal than the eye can ever believe them to be; and of | all equalisers the greatest is the calmly pleasurable variety which | many a life otherwise unattractive offers.