Chapter XI: Part IV (6)

In England, these evils are peculiarly great; for in England they are without compensation. It is possible to imagine such brilliant conversation, such varied wit, such graceful manners, such apparent gentleness, that would stifle the complaints of the moralist, and cause the half-uttered expostulation to die away upon his lips. So we can conceive that Arnaud and Nicole may have listened to the enchanting discourse of Madame de Sevigne, and under an influence so irresistible, have forborne to scan with severity the faults, glaring as they were, of the system to which she belonged. But with us the case is different--compare the English lady in her country-house, hospitable to her guests, benevolent to her dependents, as a wife spotless, as a mother most devoted, caring for all around her, dispensing education, relieving distress, encouraging merit, the guard of innocence, the shame of guilt, active, contented, gracious, exemplary: and see the same person in London--her frame worn out with fatigue, her mind ulcerated with petty mortifications, her brow clouded, her look hardened, her eye averted from unprofitable friends, her tone harsh, her demeanour restless, her whole being changed: and were there no higher motive, were it a question of advantage and convenience only, were dignity, and the good opinion of others, and consideration in the world, alone at stake, can any one hesitate as to which situation a wife or daughter should prefer? We should, indeed, be sorry if our demeanour in those vast crowds where English people flock together, rather, as it would seem, to assert a right than to gratify an inclination, were to be taken as an index of our national character--the want of all ease and simplicity, those essential ingredients of agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary meetings, have been long unfortunately notorious. No nation is so careful of the great, or so indifferent to the lesser, moralities of life as the English; and in no country is society, indebted, perhaps, to polished idleness for its greatest charms, more completely misunderstood. Too busy to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own, that true politeness which pays respect to age, which strives to put the most insignificant person in company on a level with the most considerable--virtues which our neighbours possess in an eminent degree,--are, except in a few favoured instances, unknown among us; while affectation, in other countries the badge of ignorance and vulgarity, is in ours, even in its worst shape, when it borrows the mien of rudeness, and impertinence, and effrontery, the appanage of those whose station is most conspicuous, and whose dignity is best ascertained. There is more good breeding in the cottage of a French peasant than in all the boudoirs of Grosvenor Square.

But God forbid that a word should escape from us which should seem to place the amusements of society, or the charms of conversation, in competition with those stern virtues which are the guardians of an English hearth! The austere fanaticism of the Puritans, tainted with hypocrisy as it was, was preferable a thousand times to the orgies of the Regent and the _Parc-aux-Cerfs_. If purity and refined society be, indeed, incompatible--if the love of freedom and active enterprise necessarily exclude the grace and softness which lessen, or at least teach us to forget, the burden of existence, let us be what we are; and, indeed, it is the opinion of many, that the rant of social pleasure is the price we pay for the excellence of our political institutions. It is because before the law all men are equal, that in the world so much care is taken to show that they are different. If to this we add the mercantile habits of our countrymen, the enormous wealth which their pursuits enable them to accumulate--the great honours which are the reward of successful industry and ambition--the absurd value annexed to technical distinctions--the manner in which, in our as in all free countries, those distinctions are conferred--and a certain disposition to sneer at any chivalrous, or elevated feeling, from which few of our ladies are exempt--we shall find it easy to account for the cold, stiff, ungraceful, harsh, and mercenary habits which disfigure, to the astonishment of all foreigners, the patrician class of English society. Nothing, indeed, can be less graceful than the frivolity of an Englishman. Naturally grave, serious, contemplative, if his angry stars have endowed him with enormous wealth, he carries into the pursuit of trifles the same solemnity and perseverance which, had he been more fortunately situated, would have been employed in a professional career--he carries a certain degree of gravity into his follies and his vices; as Pope, no less keen an observer than finished a poet, observed, he

"Judicious sups, and greatly daring dines"--

devotes himself to an eternal round of puerile follies, with a pompous self-importance that would be ludicrous were it exhibited in the discharge of the noblest and most sacred duties. Plate and wine seem his religion, and a well-furnished room his morality--his dinners engross his thoughts--his field sports are a nation's care. He writes books on arm-chairs, hunts with the most ineffable self-sufficiency, and talks of his dogs and horses as Howard or Clarkson might speak of the jails they had visited, and the mourners they had set free. He commits errors with a stolid air of deliberation, which the reckless passions of boiling youth could hardly palliate, but which, when perpetrated as a title to fashion, and as a passport to society, no epithets that contempt can suggest are vehement enough to stigmatize. The Englishman's vice has a business-like air with it that is intolerable--there is no illusion, no refinement--it is coarse, direct, groveling brutality--it wears its own hideous aspect with no garnish or disguise; and how seldom, even among that sex which these volumes are intended to instruct, does the brow wreathed with roses, amid the haunts of dissipation, wear a gay, a serene, or even a contented aspect! Where all the treasures that inanimate nature can furnish are scattered in profusion--where the air is fragrant with perfume, and vocal with melody, how vainly do we look for the freshness and animation, and the simplicity and single-mindedness of buoyant and delighted youth! We feel inclined, amid this gloomy dissipation and depressing pleasure, to reverse the most beautiful passage in Euripides, and to say, that the banquet and the festival do require all the heightening of art, all the embellishments of luxury, all the illusions of song, to conceal the struggles of corroding interest, and the pangs of constant mortification.

"There" (but we quote one of the most remarkable passages in the
book) "is a general aversion from the labour of thought, in all
who have not had the faculties exercised while they were pliant,
nor been supplied with a certain stock of elementary knowledge,
essential alike to any subject of science that may be presented
to their maturer years. By means of the press, many broken and
ill-sustained rays pierce across the neglect or indifference of
parents, to the minds of the young. Gleams of a rational spirit
and enlarged feeling may often be found among the daughters of
country gentlemen, whose sons are still solely devoted to
sporting and party politics.

"When we think of those mighty resources we have just been
adverting to, the strength all such tastes acquire by sympathy,
and the observation of nature and of human life they tend to
excite, we might expect they would furnish society with
everlasting sources of excitement and mutual interest, that they
would create a universal sympathy with genius and ability
wherever it was found, and soften the repulsive austerity with
which it is the nature of rank and wealth to look on humble
fortunes.

"Little or nothing of all this takes place. Frivolity and
insipidity are the prevailing characters of conversation; and
nowhere in Europe, perhaps, does difference of fortune or station
produce more unsocial and illiberal separation. Very few of those
whom fortune has released from the necessity of following some
laborious profession, are capable of passing their time agreeably
without the assistance of company; not from a spirit of gaiety
which calls on society for indulgence--not from any pleasure they
take in conversation, where they are frequently languid and
taciturn, but to rival each other in the luxury of the table, or,
by a great _variety of indescribable airs_, to make others _feel
the pain of mortification_. They meet as if _'to fight the
boundaries' of their rank and fashion_, and the less definite and
perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious
is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this
low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank: it is an English
disease. But the higher we go in society, the wider the circle of
the excluded becomes, consequently, the greater the range of
human beings cast forth from the pale of sympathy; and the more
contracted do the judgment, experience, and feelings of its
inmates become. The lofty walls, the iron spikes that surround
our villas, and the notices every where affixed 'that trespassers
will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law,' are meet
emblems of the social spirit that connects the different orders
of society in England. The effect of this is to produce narrow
minds, or, what is worse, narrow hearts on one side, and a host
of dissocial, irritable passions on the other. In each step of
the scale, those beneath see chiefly the unamiable qualities of
their superiors."

The disproportion of the happiness of society with its means, is a subject which calls forth all the eloquence and sagacity of this writer. Nor is this surprising; for it might startle the most sluggish indifference--the most incurious stupidity. How does it come to pass, that with us misery is the fruit of successful labour, that with us experience does not teach caution, that with us the most munificent charity is unable to check the accumulation of evil, moral and physical, with which it vainly endeavours to contend? How is it, that while the wealth of England is a proverb among nations, the distress of her labourers is a byword no less universal; that while her commerce encircles the globe, while her colonies are spread through both hemispheres, while regions hitherto unknown are but the resting-place of her never-ceasing enterprise, the producers of all this wealth, the causes of all this luxury, the instruments of all this civilization, lie down in despair to perish by hundreds, amid the miracles of triumphant industry by which they are surrounded? How happens it, that as our empire extends abroad, security diminishes at home? that as our reputation becomes more splendid, and our attitude more commanding, the fabric of our strength decays, and our social bulwarks rock from their foundations? Who can say that the skill and valour of the general who has added a province to our Indian empire--who, triumphing over obstacles hitherto insurmountable, has caused the tide of victory to flow from East to West, and make the Sepoy invincible--may not erelong be called upon to fulfil the thankless task of suppressing insurrection, and to control the kindling fury of a mistaken, it is true, but of a kindred population? Shall the day indeed come when in our streets there shall be solitude, and in our harbours be heard no sound of oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby? Is the vaunted splendour of this country to furnish a melancholy lesson of the instability of earthly power, and its fate to conclude a tale more glorious, to point a moral more affecting, than any which Tyre, or Sidon, or Carthage have furnished, to curb the insolence of prosperity, and to show the insignificance of man?

"Quamvis Pontica pinus,
Sylvae filia nobilis,
Jactes et genus et nomen inutile."

After dwelling on the supply of information which the present age enjoys, and which is quite without parallel in any former period, and pointing out the inconsistencies among us, of which, nevertheless, every day affords perpetual examples, the writer asks--

"Do these evils proceed from some moral perversity in the people?
Is there some natural barrier in England against the effects of
capital, industry, science, and religion; or is it not that
ignorance of the laws that regulate and harmonize social
existence, and of those that govern the human mind, has hitherto
been extensively prevalent, and is still resisting the remedies
of riper experience?

"But the poor and ignorant cannot educate themselves; it must be
the upper classes who give them the means of improvement. In the
natural laws of society, the use of a class who are independent
of labour for subsistence, is, that a certain part of the
community should have leisure to acquire that general knowledge
which is the parent of wise institutions and pure morals. That
they should have such affluence as to give weight to their
example and authority, is also desirable. Government, as has
already been observed, cannot act effectively against a very
great preponderance of error and prejudice, but must legislate in
the spirit of truths that are generally known, and in the service
of interests that excite general sympathy.

"The object of this work is not to advocate particular measures,
nor even to assume that every thing that is wrong is so through
culpable neglect; but it is to call attention to the grievous
evils, that neither legislation nor zeal and charity can
counteract with effect, till the increased education of all
classes assists their efforts. Something must be wanting, when
such unrivalled knowledge and wealth are accompanied by such
various and wide-spread evils. It is not benevolence that is
deficient, for nowhere can we turn without meeting it in private,
struggling against miseries too great for its power, and in
public devoting abilities of the first order to the cause of
humanity.

"It is the wider diffusion of knowledge we require: more heads
and hands still are wanted, qualified for acting in concert, or
at least acting generally on right principles. Too many persons
capable of generous feeling are absorbed and corrupted by luxury
and frivolity; too many waste their efforts from shallow,
mistaken, and contradictory views."

Then follows a splendid description of scientific energy, the gratification which it affords, and the noble objects to which it points the way.

"In examining the prodigious resources at the command of the
upper classes of English society, it is finely remarked, that
'the fine arts are the materials by which our physical and animal
sensations are converted into moral perceptions.'

"Every thing in the form of matter, however coarse--the refuse
and dross of more valuable materials--is resolvable, by science,
into elements too subtle for our vision, and yet possessed of
such potency that they effect transmutations more surprising than
the fables of magic. The points that spangle the still blue
vault, and make night lovely to the untaught peasant, interpreted
by science, expand into worlds and systems of worlds: some so
remote, that even the character of light, in which their
existence is declared to us, can scarcely give full assurance of
their reality--some, kindred planets which science has measured,
and has told their movements, their seasons, and the length of
their days. Such resemblances to our own globe are ascertained in
their general laws, and such diversity in their peculiar ones,
that we are led irresistibly to believe they all teem with
beings, sentient and intelligent as we are, yet whose senses, and
powers, and modes of existence, must be very dissimilar, and
indefinitely varied. The regions of space, within the field of
our vision, present us with phenomena the most incomprehensibly
mysterious, and with knowledge the most accurate and
demonstrable. Light, motion, form, and magnitude--the animal,
vegetable, and mineral kingdoms--have their several sciences, and
each would exhaust a life to master it completely. No uneasy
passion follows him who engages in such speculations, where
continual pursuit is made happy by the sense of continual
progress. He leaves his cares at the threshold; for when his
attention is fixed, so great is the pleasure of contemplation,
that it seems good to have been born for this alone.

"If we turn to the moral world, where, strange as it seems, we
meet with less clearness and grandeur, yet there our deep
interest in its truths supplies a different, perhaps a more
powerful attraction. While we wonder and hope, the general laws
of sentient existence give us glimpses of their harmony with
those of inanimate nature. The latter seems assuredly made for
the use of the former. The identity of benevolence with wisdom
presents itself to our minds as a necessary truth, and,
notwithstanding our perplexities, brings peace to our hearts.
Social distinctions sink to insignificance when contemplating our
place in existence, and the privilege of reading the book of
nature, and sharing the thoughts and the sentiments of the
distinguished among men, atones for obscurity and neglect;
neither would the troubled power of a throne nor the flushing of
victory repay us for the sacrifice of those pleasures."

The second volume opens with a dissertation on luxury, in which the subject is treated with the depth and perspicuity that the extracts we have already made will have prepared our readers to anticipate. Luxury is a word of relative, and therefore of ambiguous signification; it may be the test of prosperity--it may be the harbinger of decay: according to the state of society in which it prevails, its signification will, of course, be different. The effect of civilization is to increase the number of our wants. The same degree of education which, during the last century, was considered, even by the upper classes, a superfluity, is now a necessary for the middling class, and will soon become a necessary for the lowest, or all but the lowest, members of society. Most of our readers are acquainted with the story of the Highland chief who rebuked his son indignantly for making a pillow of a snowball. Sumptuary laws have always been inefficient, or efficient only for the purposes of oppression. Public morality has been their pretext--the private gratification of jealousy their aim. In republics they were intended to allay the envy of the poor--in monarchies to flatter the arrogance of the great. The first of these motives produced, as Say observes, the law Orchia at Rome, which prohibited the invitation of more than a certain number of guests. The second was the cause of an edict passed in the reign of Henry II. of France, by which the use of silken shoes and garments was confined to princes and bishops. States are ruined by the extravagance, not of their subjects, but of their rulers.

Luxury is pernicious when it is purchased at an excessive price, or when it stands in the way of advantages greater and more attainable. The worse a government is, the more effect does it produce upon the manners and habits of its subjects. The influence of a government of favourites and minions over the community, is as prodigious as it is baneful. Every innocent pleasure is a blessing. Luxury is innocent, nay, it is desirable, as far as it can contribute to health and cleanliness--to rational enjoyment; as far as it serves to prevent gross debauchery; and, as one of our poets has expressed it,

"When sensual pleasures cloy,
To fill the languid pause with finer joy,"

it should be encouraged. It does not follow, because the materials for luxury are wanted, that the bad passions and selfishness, which are its usual companions, will be wanted also. A Greenlander may display as much gluttony over his train oil and whale blubber as the most refined epicure can exhibit with the _Physiologie du Goût_ in his hand, and with all Monsieur Ude's science at his disposal. When the gratification of our taste and senses interferes with our duty to our country, or our neighbours, or our friends--when, for the sake of their indulgence, we sacrifice our independence--or when, rather than abandon it, we neglect our duties sacred and imperative as they may be--the most favourable casuists on the side of luxury allow that it is criminal. But even when it stops far short of this scandalous excess, the habit of immoderate self-indulgence can hardly long associate in the same breast with generous, manly, and enlightened sentiments: its inevitable effect is to stifle all vigorous energy, as well as to eradicate every softer virtue. It is the parent of that satiety which is the most unspeakable of all miseries--a short satisfaction is purchased by long suffering, and the result is an addition to our stock, not of pleasure, but of pain.

The next topic to which our attention is directed is the influence of habit. Habit is thus defined:--

"Habit is the aptitude for any actions or impressions produced by
frequent repetition of them."

The word impressions is used to designate affections of mind and body that are involuntary, in contradistinction to those which we can originate and control. For instance, we may choose whether or not we will enter into any particular enquiry; but when we have entered upon it, we cannot prevent the result that the evidence concerning it will produce upon our minds. A person conversant with mathematical studies can no more help believing that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side, than, if his hand had been thrust in the fire, he could help feeling heat. The remarks which follow are ingenious and profound:--

"The more amusements," continues the writer, "partake of an useful
character, the more lasting they are. This is never the case with
trifles; when the enjoyment is over, they leave little or nothing
in the mind. They are not steps to something else, they have no
connexion with other and further _results, to be brought out by
further endeavours. The attempt to make life a series of quickly
succeeding emotions, will ever prove a miserable failure;_
whereas, when the chief part of our time is spent in labour,
active power increases--the exertion of it becomes habit--the
mind gathers strength; and emotion being husbanded, retains its
freshness, and the spirits preserve their alacrity through life.
It follows that the most agreeable labours are those which
superadd to an object of important and lasting interest a due
mixture of intermediate and somewhat diversified results. To a
mechanic, making a set of chairs and tables, for example, is more
agreeable than working daily at a sawpit. But nothing can deprive
the industrious man (however undiversified his employment) of the
advantage of having a constant and important pursuit--viz.
earning the necessaries and comforts of life; and when we
consider the uneasiness of a life without any steady pursuit, and
how slight is the influence that such as one merely voluntary has
over most men, it seems certain that, as a general rule, we do
not err in representing the necessity of labour as a safeguard of
happiness."

Active habits are such as action gives: passive habits are such as our condition qualifies us to receive. In emotion, however violent, we may be passive, the forgiving and the vindictive man are for a time equally passive in their emotions. It is when the vindictive man proceeds to retaliation upon an adversary that he becomes a voluntary agent. It is often difficult to analyse the ingredients of our thought, and to determine how far they are involuntary and how far they are spontaneous. Nor is this an enquiry the solution of which can ever affect the majority of mankind: it is not with such subtleties that the practice of the moralist is concerned. It is a psychological fact, which never can be repeated too often, that habit deadens impression and fortifies activity. It gives energy to that power which depends on the sanction of the will--it renders the sensations which are nearly passive every day more languid and insignificant.

"Mon sachet de fleurs," says Montaigne, "sert d'abord à mon nez; mais, après que je m'en suis servi huit jours, il ne sert plus qu'au nez des assistants." So the taste becomes accustomed to the most irritating stimulants, and is finally palsied by their continued application, yet the necessity of having recourse to these provocatives becomes daily more imperious.

"Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops
Nec sitim pellit."

The tanner who lives among his hides till he is insensible to their exhalations--the surgeon who has conquered the disgust with which the objects around him must fill an ordinary individual--the sensualist, on whose jaded appetite all the resources of art and all the loveliness of nature are employed in vain--may serve as common instances of the first part of the proposition; and the astonishing facility acquired by particular men in the business with which they are conversant, are proofs no less irrefragable of the second. Can any argument be conceived which is more decisive in favour of the moral economy to which even this lower world is subject, than the undeniable fact, that virtue is fortified by exercise, and pain conquered by endurance; while vice, like the bearer of the sibyl's books, extorts every hour a greater sacrifice for less enjoyment? The passage in Mammon's speech is no less philosophically accurate than it is poetically beautiful--

"Out torments also may in length of time
Become our elements, these piercing fires
As soft as now severe, our temper changed
Into their temper, which must needs remove
The sensible of pain."

So does man pass on his way, from youth to manhood, from manhood till the shadow of death falls upon him; and while his moral and physical structure adapts itself to the incessant vicissitudes of his being, he imagines himself the same. The same in sunshine and in tempest--in the temperate and the torrid zone--in sickness and in health--in joy and sorrow--at school and in the camp or senate--still, still he is the same. His passions change, his pleasures alter; what once filled him with rapture, is now indifferent, it may be loathsome. The friends of his youth are his friends no longer--other faces are around him--other voices echo in his ears. Still he is the same--the same, when chilling experience has taught him its bitter lesson, and when life in all its glowing freshness first dawned upon his view. The same, when "vanity of vanities" is graven upon his heart--as when his youthful fancy revelled in scenes of love, of friendship, and of renown. The same, when cold, cautious, interested, suspicious, guilty--as when daring, reckless, frank, confiding, innocent. Still the dream continues, still the vision lasts, until some warning yet unknown--the tortures of disease, or the loss of the very object round which his heartstrings were entwined, anguish within, and desolation without--stir him into consciousness, and remind him of that fast approaching change which no illusion can conceal. Such is the pliability of our nature, so varied are the modes of our being; and thus, through the benevolence of Him who made us, the cause which renders our keenest pleasures transient, makes pain less acute, and death less terrible.

It follows from this, that in youth positive attainment is a matter of little moment, compared with the habits which our instructors encourage us to acquire. The fatal error which is casting a blight over our plans of education, is to look merely to the immediate result, totally disregarding the motive which has led to it, and the qualities of which it is the indication; yet, would those to whom the delicate and most responsible task of education is confided, but consider that habits of mind are formed by inward principle, and not external action, they would adopt a more rational system than that to which mediocrity owes its present triumph over us; and which bids fair to wither up, during another generation, the youth and hopes of England. Such infatuation is equal to that of the husbandman who should wish to deprive the year of its spring, and the plants of their blossoms, in hopes of a more nutritious and abundant harvest.

"The inward principle required to give habits of industry,
temperance, good temper, and so forth, is the express intention
of being industrious, temperate, and gentle, and regulating one's
actions accordingly. But the inward principle exercised by a
routine of irksome restraints, submitted to passively on no other
grounds but the laws of authority, or the influence of fashion,
or imposed merely as the necessary condition of childhood, may be
only that of yielding to present impression. He who, in youth,
yields passively to fear or force, in after life may be found to
yield equally to pleasure or temper; the habit of yielding to
present impressions, in the first case, prepares the mind for
yielding to them in the second, without any attempt at
self-control.

"The necessity of reducing the young, in the first instance, to
implicit obedience, and the utility of a strict routine of
duties, is not hereby disputed. The impressions arising from
every species of restraint and coercion, whether from the command
of another or our own reason, being almost invariably unpleasant
at first, it is necessary (on the theory of habit) to weaken
their force by repetition, before the principle of
self-government can be expected to act. But the point insisted on
is, that weakening the pain of restraint and of submission to
rules, will not necessarily create an intention of adhering to
the rules, when coercion ceases. An intention is a mental action,
and even when excited, it is neither impossible nor uncommon that
the practice of forming intentions may be accompanied by the
practice of breaking them; and as the shame and remorse of so
doing wear out through frequency, a character of weakness is
formed."

Although we regret the omission of some observations on waste and prodigality--remarks in which the most profound knowledge of the best authorities on this subject is tempered with a strict attention to practical interest, and a minute acquaintance with the affairs of ordinary life--we proceed to the chapters on "Frivolity and Ignorance," with which, and an admirable dissertation on the authority of reason, the volume terminates. These chapters yield to none in this admirable work for utility and importance; there are three subjects on which the influence of frivolity, baneful as it always is, is most peculiarly dangerous and destructive--education, politics, and religion. On all these great points, inseparably connected as they are with human happiness and virtue, the frivolity of women may give a bias to the character of the individual, which will be traced in his career to the last moment of his existence. The author well observes that frivolity and ignorance, rather than deliberate guilt, are the causes of political error and tergiversation. If there are few persons ready to devote themselves to the good of their species, and carrying their attention beyond kindred and acquaintance, to comprise the most distant posterity and regions the most remote within the scope of their benevolence; so there are few of those monsters in selfishness, who would pursue their own petty interests when the happiness of millions is an obstacle to its gratification; but as a leaf before the eye will hide a universe, self-love limits the intellectual horizon to a compass inconceivably narrow; and the prosperity of nations, when placed in the balance with a riband or a pension, has too often kicked the beam. Professional business, and the love of detail, which is so deeply rooted in most English natures, tends also to contract the thoughts, to erect a false standard of merit, and to fill the mind with petty objects. As an instance of this, it may be remarked that Lord Somers is the only great man who, in England, has ever filled a judicial situation. So wide is the difference between present success and future reputation--so weak on all sides but one, are those who have limited themselves to one side only--so technical and engrossing are the avocations of an English lawyer. The best, if not the only remedy for this evil, is, in the words of our author, the "study of well-chosen books."

"Life must often consist of acts or concerns which, taken
individually, are trivial; but the speculations of great minds
relate to important objects. By their eloquence they draw forth
the best emotions of which we are capable, they fill our minds
with the knowledge of great and general truths, which, if they
relate to the works of creation, exalt our nature and almost give
us a new existence; or if they unfold the conditions and duties
of human life, they kindle our desire for worthy ends, and teach
us how to promote them. We learn to consider ourselves not as
single and detached beings, with separate interests from others,
but as parts of that great class who are the support of society--
that is, the upright, the intelligent, and the industrious. Hence
we cease to be absorbed by one set of narrow ideas; and the least
duties are dignified by being viewed as parts of a general
system. The bulk of mankind must and ought to confine their
attention principally to their own immediate business. But if
they who belong to the higher orders, do not avail themselves of
their command of time, to enlarge their minds and acquire
knowledge, one of the great uses of an upper class will be lost."

The trite and ridiculous axiom, the common refuge of imbecility, that women should take no interest in politics, is then sifted and exposed; it would be as wise to say, that women should take no interest in the blood that circulates through their bodies because they are not physicians, or in the air they breathe because they are not chemists. The people who are most fond of repeating this absurdity, are, it may be observed, the very people who are most furious with women for not acquiescing at once in any absurdity which they may think proper to promulgate as an incontrovertible truth. Ill temper, and rash opinions, and crude notions, are always mischievous; but it is not in politics alone that they are exhibited, and the women most applauded for not _meddling_ with politics, (an expression which, as our author properly observes, assumes the whole matter in dispute,) are generally those who adhere to the most obsolete doctrines with the greatest tenacity, and pursue those who differ with them in opinion with the most unmitigated rancour. In short, it is not till enquiry supersedes implicit belief, till violence gives place to reflection, till the study of sound and useful writers takes the place of sweeping and indiscriminate condemnation, that this aphorism is brought forward by those who would have listened with delight to the wildest effusions of bigotry and ignorance. But in the work before us, the author (convincing as her reasons are) has furnished the most complete practical refutation of this ridiculous error.

Infinitely worse, however, than any evil which can arise from this or any other source, is that which the opinions and ideas of a frivolous woman must entail upon those unhappy beings of whom she superintends the education.

"Turpe est difficiles habere nugas
Et stultus labor est ineptiarum,"

is a text on which, even in this great and free country, many comments may be found.

The pursuit of eminence in trifles, the common sign of a bad heart, is an infallible proof of a feeble understanding. A man may dishonour his birth, ruin his estate, lose his reputation, and destroy his health, for the sake of being the first jockey or the favourite courtier of his day. And how should it be otherwise, when from the lips whence other lessons should have proceeded, selfishness has been inculcated as a duty, a desire for vain distinctions and the love of pelf encouraged as virtues, and a splendid equipage, or it may be some bodily advantage, pointed out as the highest object of human ambition? To set the just value on every enjoyment, to choose noble and becoming objects of pursuit, are the first lessons a child should learn; and if he does not learn their rudiments on his mother's knees, he will hardly acquire the knowledge of them elsewhere. The least disparagement of virtue, the slightest admiration for trifling and merely extrinsic objects, may produce an indelible effect on the tender mind of youth; and the mother who has taught her son to bow down to success, to pay homage to wealth and station, which virtue and genius should alone appropriate, is the person to whom the meanness of the crouching sycophant, the treachery of the trading politician, the brutality of the selfish tyrant, and the avarice of the sordid miser, in after life must be attributed.

This argument is closed by some very judicious remarks on the degree in which the perusal of works of imagination is beneficial.

"It is not easy to explain to a person whose mind is trifling,
the consequences of the over-indulgence in passive impressions
produced by light reading, or to make them understand the
different effect produced by the highest order of works of
imagination, and the trivial compositions which inundate the
press, with no merit but some commonplace moral. Both are classed
together as works of amusement; but the first enrich the mind
with great and beautiful ideas, and, provided they be not
indulged in to an extravagant excess, refine the feelings to
generosity and tenderness. They counteract the sordid or the
petty turn, which we are liable to contract from being wholly
immersed in mere worldly business, or given up to the follies of
the great world; in either case confined too much to intercourse
with barren hearts and narrow minds. It is of great use to the
'dull, sullen prisoner in the body's cage' sometimes 'to peep
out,' and be made to feel that it has aspirations for somewhat
more excellent than it has ever known; and that its own ideas can
stretch forth into a grandeur beyond what this real existence
provides for it. It is good for us to feel that the vices into
which we are beguiled are hateful to our own minds in
contemplation, and that it is our unconquerable nature to love
and adore that virtue we do not, or cannot, attain to."

The remarks on the influence of frivolity on religion, on the mistaken name and worldly spirit introduced amongst its most solemn ordinances, are no less excellent. After pointing out the danger of mistaking excitement for devotion, and of separating the duties of man from the will of God, the sanctions of religion from the lessons of morality, the writer observes--

"The weak and ignorant are peculiarly liable to be infected with
these doctrines, and to them they are peculiarly hurtful. Unable
to take a just view of their particular duties, or of the uses
and purposes of our natural faculties, creatures of impulse,
slaves of circumstances, the pleasures of this hour fill them
with vanity, the devotion of the next with enthusiasm, or perhaps
terror. Charmed by worldly follies because they are ignorant or
idle, and without resistance to vice because they have never
learned self-command, they seek to extirpate all the natural
emotions and desires which they do not know how to regulate, and
so give up the world. But they deceive themselves; their moral
defects are not lessened; they have only changed their objects.
The frivolity which formerly made trifles absorb them, now spends
itself on religion, which it degrades. Whatever the former
defects of their character, whether selfishness, vanity, pride,
ill-temper, indolence, or any other, it remains unconquered,
though the manner in which it exhibits itself is different. In
one respect they are much worse; formerly they were less blind to
their own imperfections; they sometimes suspected they were
wrong; now they are quite satisfied they are right; nor can they
easily be undeceived, because, when about to examine their hearts
and their conduct, the error in their views directs their efforts
to a false standard."

We think we cannot more appropriately close the faint outline, in which we have endeavoured, however feebly, to shadow forth the merit of these volumes, than by placing before our readers the tribute to departed excellence, which this touching and finished picture is intended to convey.

"Leaving the contemplation of feverish excitement, fantastic and
complicated subtleties, angry zeal, and dissocial passions, I
turn to the records of memory, where are graven for ever the
lineaments of one who was indeed a disciple of Christ, and whose
character seemed the earthly reflection of his. Wherever there
was existence her benevolence flowed forth, never enfeebled by
the distance of its object, yet flushing the least of daily
pleasures with its warmth. Her views rose to the most
comprehensive moral grandeur, while her calm, uncompromising
energy against sin, was combined with an ever-flowing sympathy
for weakness and woe. She spent her life in one continued system
of active beneficence, in which her business, her projects, her
pleasures, were but so many varied forms of serving her
fellow-creatures. Never for a moment did a reflection for herself
cross the current of her purposes for them. Her whole heart so
went with their distresses and their joys, that she scarcely
seemed to have an interest apart from theirs. The simplicity of
her character was peculiarly striking, in the unhesitating
readiness with which she received--I might even say, with which
she grasped at--the correction of her errors, and listened to the
suggestions of other persons. One undivided desire possessed her
mind--it was not to seem right, but to do right.

"What heightened the resemblance between her and the model she
followed, was, that her counsels came not from a bosom that had
never been shaken with the passions she admonished, or the
sorrows she endeavoured to soothe. Her character was one of deep
sensibility and passions strong even to violence; but they were
controlled and directed by such vivid faith as has never been
surpassed. Her long life had tried her with almost every pang
that attends the attachment of such beings to the mortal and the
suffering, the erring and perverse; and when those sorrows came,
that reached her heart through its deepest and most sacred
affections, the passion burst forth, that showed what the energy
of that principle must have been, that could have brought such a
mind to a tenor of habitual calmness and serenity. When every
element of anguish had been mingled together in one dreadful cup,
and reason for a week or two was tottering in its seat, she was
seen to resume the struggle against the passions that for a
moment had conquered. The bonds that attached her to life were
indeed broken for ever, but she recovered her heart-felt
submission to God, and she learned by degrees again to be happy
in the happiness she gave.

"It was this depth and strength of feeling that gave her a power
over others, seldom surpassed, I believe, by any other mortal. In
her the erring and the wretched found a sure refuge from
themselves. The weakness that shrunk from the censure or the
scorn of others, could be poured out to her as to one whose
mission upon earth was to pity and to heal; for she knew the
whole range of human infirmity, and that the wisest have the
roots of those frailties that conquer the weak. But in restoring
the fallen to their connexion with the honoured, she never held
out a hope that they might parley with their temptations, or
lower their standard of virtue: a confession to her cut off all
self-delusion as to culpable conduct or passions. While she
inspired the most uncompromising condemnation of the thing that
was wrong, she never advised what was too hard for the "bruised
reed;" she chose not the moment of excitement to rebuke the
misguidings of passion, nor of weakness to point out the rigour
of duty. But strength came in her presence: she seemed to bring
with her irresistible evidence that any thing could be done which
she said ought to be done. The truths of religion, stripped of
fantastic disguises, appeared at her call with a living reality,
and for a time, at least, the troubles of life sank down to their
just level. When our sorrows are too big for our own bosoms, if
others receive then with stoicism, it repels all desire to seek
relief at their hands; but the calmness with which she attended
to the effusions and perturbations of grief, seemed the earnest
of safety from one who had passed through the storm. The deep and
tender expression of her noble countenance suggested that feeling
with which a superior being might be supposed to look down from
heaven on the anguish of those who are still in the toils, but
know not the reward that awaits them.

"Every thing petty seemed to drop off from her mind, but she
imbibed the spirit of essentials so perfectly, she followed it
throughout with such singleness of heart, that its influence
affected her minutest actions, not by an effort of studied
attention, but with the steadiness of a natural law. Nature and
revelation she regarded as the two parts of one great connected
system; she always contemplated the one with reference to the
other; her views were therefore all practical and free from
confusion, and nothing that promoted the welfare of this world
could cease to be a part of her duty to God. It was her maxim
that the motive dignified the action, however trivial in itself;
and all the actions of her life were ennobled by the motive of
obedience to an all-powerful Being, because he is the pure
essence of wisdom and goodness. In the virtue of those who had
not the consoling belief of the Christian, she still saw the
handwriting of God, that cannot be effaced from a generous mind;
and she used to dwell with delight on the idea that the good man,
from whose eyes the light of faith was withheld in this life,
would arise with rapture in the next, to the knowledge that a
happiness was in store for him which he had not dared to believe.

"It was not the extent of her intellectual endowments that made
her the object of veneration to all who knew her; it was her
extraordinary moral energy. The clear and vigorous view she took
of every subject arose chiefly from her habit of looking directly
for its bearing on virtue or happiness; she saw the essential at
a glance, or could not be diverted from the truth by a passion or
a prejudice. Hence, also, her lofty undeviating justice; her
regard to the rights of others was so scrupulous, that every one
within reach of her influence reposed on her decisions with
unhesitating trust; nor would the certainty that the interests of
those she loved best were involved, have cast a shadow of doubt
over her stainless impartiality.

"She could be deceived, for she was too simple and lofty always
to conceive the objects of base minds:--

"'And oft, though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps
At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity
Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill,
Where no ill seems.'
_Paradise Lost._

"Nevertheless, she generally read the characters of artifice and
insincerity with intuitive quickness, though it was often
believed she was duped by those whom she saw through completely.
Of this she was aware, but she was so exempt from all desire to
prove her sagacity, that she never cared to correct the
misconception; and she held that it was neither useful nor quite
justifiable to expose all the pretences we may discover, till it
became necessary to set the unwary on their guard.

"She never renounced the innocent pleasures or pursuits of life,
nor the proprieties of a distinguished station, though she
partook so little of its luxuries, that she could pass from the
splendour of her own establishment to one the most confined,
apparently without sensibility to the change. Wherever she moved,
she inspired joy and cheerfulness; yet she was by no means
unreserved, except to those she tenderly loved, and it was
surprising how any manner so gentle, could at the same time
oppose a barrier so impassable to the advances of the unworthy.
She enjoyed the beauty of nature with passion. Her mind, at an
advanced age, had all the elasticity and animation of the prime
of life, and she could be led to forget half the night in the
excitement of conversation. Happy were the hours spent with her
in the discussion of every subject that could call forth her
opinions, and her wide knowledge of the eventful times in which
she had lived!--hours that exalted the feelings, informed the
understandings, and animated the playfulness of younger minds,
who found that forty years of difference between their age and
hers, took nothing from their sympathies, but added a new and
rare delight to their intercourse.

"But she is gone! To those who knew her, her counsels are silent
and her place void; but there remains the distinct consciousness,
that to them had been given a living evidence of the true
Christian spirit, for if hers were not true, than many errors be
more excellent than truth! Far distant, and with unequal steps,
they endeavour to follow her course and perhaps the distaste with
which they turn from the defective and ill-proportioned models
that are forced on their admiration, is scarcely consistent with
the charity she always taught."

Great, indeed, is the task assigned to woman. Who can elevate its dignity? who can exaggerate its importance? Not to make laws, not to lead armies, not to govern empires, but to form those by whom laws are made, and armies led, and empires governed; to guard from the slightest taint of possible infirmity the frail, and as yet spotless creature whose moral, no less than his physical, being must be derived from her; to inspire those principles, to inculcate those doctrines, to animate those sentiments, which generations yet unborn, and nations yet uncivilized, shall learn to bless; to soften firmness into mercy, to chasten honour into refinement, to exalt generosity into virtue; by her soothing cares to allay the anguish of the body, and the far worse anguish of the mind; by her tenderness to disarm passion; by her purity to triumph over sense; to cheer the scholar sinking under his toil; to console the statesman for the ingratitude of a mistaken people; to be the compensation for hopes that are blighted, for friends that are perfidious, for happiness that has passed away. Such is her vocation--the couch of the tortured sufferer, the prison of the deserted friend, the scaffold of the godlike patriot, the cross of a rejected Saviour; these are the scenes of woman's excellence, these are the theatres on which her greatest triumphs have been achieved. Such is her destiny--to visit the forsaken, to attend to the neglected; amid the forgetfulness of myriads to remember--amid the execrations of multitudes to bless; when monarchs abandon, when counsellors betray, when justice persecutes, when brethren and disciples fly, to remain unshaken and unchanged; and to exhibit, on this lower world, a type of that love--pure, constant, and ineffable--which in another world we are taught to believe the best reward of virtue.

* * * * *

A PLEA FOR ANCIENT TOWNS AGAINST RAILWAYS.

It is impossible to look, without surprise, to the progress of the railway system since the first experiment in 1830. The Liverpool and Manchester line was opened in the September of that year, at an expense of £.1,200,000; and in the thirteen years since that period, line after line has been laid down and opened for traffic, till the completed railways amount to many hundred miles in length, and the expenditure of capital has been many millions of money.

The advantages of a line between Manchester and Liverpool were obvious. It connected the two towns--the importing and the manufacturing--which needed connexion the most; and, in fact, the harbour gained an enormous manufacturing population, and the population gained a harbour. The outlay, prodigious as it was, was found a profitable investment; but the benefits of the improvement were so great that the mere profits on the undertaking, as a pecuniary speculation, were lost sight of, in the higher view of the impetus given to the trade of these two main seats of our commercial enterprize. It became a national undertaking; Birmingham and the other wealthy towns were determined to have the same advantage; London became, of course, the great centre to which every new line tended; and in an incredibly short space of time, at an incredible expenditure of money, the iron and cotton emporiums of the north, the packet stations of the south and south-west, the agricultural and manufacturing districts of the north-east, all were moved into the actual neighbourhood of the capital. The beautiful Southampton water flowed within three hours of the Bank. Ipswich was not much further off than Hammersmith; and Bath and Bristol were but a morning's drive from Buckingham palace or Windsor.

What has been the effect of all these improvements, and to what do they all tend?