| <SATURDAY REVIEW>
| <ANNE MOZLEY>
| <VARIETY>
| <ETEXT SCANNED FROM PUBLISHED WORK>
| <"ESSAYS ON SOCIAL SUBJECTS">
| <PB N="71">
| 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
| <pb n="72">
| 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, 
| <p> "Oh, is not this first-rate?" </p> as they are whirled past 
| shops, theatres, and placarded walls; <p> "and they are in 
| chapel now at Brixton!" </p> 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, <p> "beholds the 
| same still; still, still, the same, the same" </p> ~~ 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
| <pb n="73">
| 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
| <pb n="74">
| 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, <p> "This is 
| new to me" </p> ~~ 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. <p> "I can't say," </p> she replied, <p> "as I 
| see'd anything pertick'lar;" </p> 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
| <pb n="75">
| 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.
| <pb n="76">
| 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
| <pb n=""77">
| 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.
| <pb n="78">
| 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.
| <pb n="79">
| 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
| <pb n="80">
| 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
| <pb n="81">
| 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.