Chapter II: Part 2

Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much to death as the turtles their pursuit of it. They have hardly more than skin enough to hold themselves together; they court death every time they cross the road. Yet death comes not to them more than to the turtle, whose defences are so great that there is little left inside to be defended. Moreover, the slugs fare best in the long run, for turtles are dying out, while slugs are not, and there must be millions of slugs all the world over for every single turtle. Of the two vanities, therefore, that of the slug seems most substantial.

In either case the creature thinks itself safe, but is sure to be found out sooner or later; nor is it easy to explain this mockery save by reflecting that everything must have its meat in due season, and that meat can only be found for such a multitude of mouths by giving everything as meat in due season to something else. This is like the Kilkenny cats, or robbing Peter to pay Paul; but it is the way of the world, and as every animal must contribute in kind to the picnic of the universe, one does not see what better arrangement could be made than the providing each race with a hereditary fallacy, which shall in the end get it into a scrape, but which shall generally stand the wear and tear of life for some time. "_Do ut des_" is the writing on all flesh to him that eats it; and no creature is dearer to itself than it is to some other that would devour it.

Nor is there any statement or proposition more invulnerable than living forms are. Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms. They support one another as plants and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh: it is meteoric--suspended in midair; it is the baseless fabric of a vision so vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails a system based on faith fails also.

Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a reserve? Probably there is not, but happily there can be no such panic, for even though the cultured classes may do so, the uncultured are too dull to have brains enough to commit such stupendous folly. It takes a long course of academic training to educate a man up to the standard which he must reach before he can entertain such questions seriously, and by a merciful dispensation of Providence, university training is almost as costly as it is unprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion rather than on demonstration.

So I turned my steps homewards; I saw a good many more things on my way home, but I was told that I was not to see more this time than I could get into twelve pages of the _Universal Review_; I must therefore reserve any remark which I think might perhaps entertain the reader for another occasion.

THE AUNT, THE NIECES, AND THE DOG {3}

When a thing is old, broken, and useless we throw it on the dust-heap, but when it is sufficiently old, sufficiently broken, and sufficiently useless we give money for it, put it into a museum, and read papers over it which people come long distances to hear. By-and-by, when the whirligig of time has brought on another revenge, the museum itself becomes a dust-heap, and remains so till after long ages it is re-discovered, and valued as belonging to a neo-rubbish age--containing, perhaps, traces of a still older paleo-rubbish civilisation. So when people are old, indigent, and in all respects incapable, we hold them in greater and greater contempt as their poverty and impotence increase, till they reach the pitch when they are actually at the point to die, whereon they become sublime. Then we place every resource our hospitals can command at their disposal, and show no stint in our consideration for them.

It is the same with all our interests. We care most about extremes of importance and of unimportance; but extremes of importance are tainted with fear, and a very imperfect fear casteth out love. Extremes of unimportance cannot hurt us, therefore we are well disposed towards them; the means may come to do so, therefore we do not love them. Hence we pick a fly out of a milk-jug and watch with pleasure over its recovery, for we are confident that under no conceivable circumstances will it want to borrow money from us; but we feel less sure about a mouse, so we show it no quarter. The compilers of our almanacs well know this tendency of our natures, so they tell us, not when Noah went into the ark, nor when the temple of Jerusalem was dedicated, but that Lindley Murray, grammarian, died January 16, 1826. This is not because they could not find so many as three hundred and sixty-five events of considerable interest since the creation of the world, but because they well know we would rather hear of something less interesting. We care most about what concerns us either very closely, or so little that practically we have nothing whatever to do with it.

I once asked a young Italian, who professed to have a considerable knowledge of English literature, which of all our poems pleased him best. He replied without a moment's hesitation:--

"Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon."

He said this was better than anything in Italian. They had Dante and Tasso, and ever so many more great poets, but they had nothing comparable to "Hey diddle diddle," nor had he been able to conceive how any one could have written it. Did I know the author's name, and had we given him a statue? On this I told him of the young lady of Harrow who would go to church in a barrow, and plied him with whatever rhyming nonsense I could call to mind, but it was no use; all of these things had an element of reality that robbed them of half their charm, whereas "Hey diddle diddle" had nothing in it that could conceivably concern him.

So again it is with the things that gall us most. What is it that rises up against us at odd times and smites us in the face again and again for years after it has happened? That we spent all the best years of our life in learning what we have found to be a swindle, and to have been known to be a swindle by those who took money for misleading us? That those on whom we most leaned most betrayed us? That we have only come to feel our strength when there is little strength left of any kind to feel? These things will hardly much disturb a man of ordinary good temper. But that he should have said this or that little unkind and wanton saying; that he should have gone away from this or that hotel and given a shilling too little to the waiter; that his clothes were shabby at such or such a garden-party--these things gall us as a corn will sometimes do, though the loss of a limb way not be seriously felt.

I have been reminded lately of these considerations with more than common force by reading the very voluminous correspondence left by my grandfather, Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury, whose memoirs I am engaged in writing. I have found a large number of interesting letters on subjects of serious import, but must confess that it is to the hardly less numerous lighter letters that I have been most attracted, nor do I feel sure that my eminent namesake did not share my predilection. Among other letters in my possession I have one bundle that has been kept apart, and has evidently no connection with Dr. Butler's own life. I cannot use these letters, therefore, for my book, but over and above the charm of their inspired spelling, I find them of such an extremely trivial nature that I incline to hope the reader may derive as much amusement from them as I have done myself, and venture to give them the publicity here which I must refuse them in my book. The dates and signatures have, with the exception of Mrs. Newton's, been carefully erased, but I have collected that they were written by the two servants of a single lady who resided at no great distance from London, to two nieces of the said lady who lived in London itself. The aunt never writes, but always gets one of the servants to do so for her. She appears either as "your aunt" or as "She"; her name is not given, but she is evidently looked upon with a good deal of awe by all who had to do with her.

The letters almost all of them relate to visits either of the aunt to London, or of the nieces to the aunt's home, which, from occasional allusions to hopping, I gather to have been in Kent, Sussex, or Surrey. I have arranged them to the best of my power, and take the following to be the earliest. It has no signature, but is not in the handwriting of the servant who styles herself Elizabeth, or Mrs. Newton. It runs:--

"MADAM,--Your Aunt Wishes me to inform you she will be glad if you
will let hir know if you think of coming To hir House thiss month or
Next as she cannot have you in September on a kount of the Hoping If
you ar coming she thinkes she had batter Go to London on the Day you
com to hir House the says you shall have everry Thing raddy for you at
hir House and Mrs. Newton to meet you and stay with you till She
returnes a gann.

"if you arnot Coming thiss Summer She will be in London before thiss
Month is out and will Sleep on the Sofy As She willnot be in London
more thann two nits. and She Says she willnot truble you on anny a
kount as She Will returne the Same Day before She will plage you anny
more. but She thanks you for asking hir to London. but She says She
cannot leve the house at prassant She sayhir Survants ar to do for you
as she cannot lodge yours nor she willnot have thim in at the house
anny more to brake and destroy hir thinks and beslive hir and make up
Lies by hir and Skandel as your too did She says she mens to pay fore
2 Nits and one day, She says the Pepelwill let hir have it if you ask
thim to let hir: you Will be so good as to let hir know sun: wish She
is to do, as She says She dos not care anny thing a bout it. which way
tiss she is batter than She was and desirs hir Love to bouth bouth.

"Your aunt wises to know how the silk Clocks ar madup [how the silk
cloaks are made up] with a Cape or a wood as she is a goin to have one
madeup to rideout in in hir littel shas [chaise].

"Charles is a butty and so good.

"Mr & Mrs Newton ar quite wall & desires to be remembered to you."

I can throw no light on the meaning of the verb to "beslive." Each letter in the MS. is so admirably formed that there can be no question about the word being as I have given it. Nor have I been able to discover what is referred to by the words "Charles is a butty and so good." We shall presently meet with a Charles who "flies in the Fier," but that Charles appears to have been in London, whereas this one is evidently in Kent, or wherever the aunt lived.

The next letter is from Mrs. Newton

"DER MISS ---, I Receve your Letter your Aunt is vary Ill and
Lowspireted I Donte think your Aunt wood Git up all Day if My Sister
Wasnot to Persage her We all Think hir lif is two monopolous. you Wish
to know Who Was Liveing With your Aunt. that is My Sister and
Willian--and Cariline--as Cock and Old Poll Pepper is Come to Stay
With her a Littel Wile and I hoped [hopped] for Your Aunt, and Harry
has Worked for your Aunt all the Summer. Your Aunt and Harry Whent to
the Wells Races and Spent a very Pleasant Day your Aunt has Lost Old
Fanney Sow She Died about a Week a Go Harry he Wanted your Aunt to
have her killed and send her to London and Shee Wold Fech her 11
pounds the Farmers have Lost a Greet Deal of Cattel such as Hogs and
Cows What theay call the Plage I Whent to your Aunt as you Wish Mee to
Do But She Told Mee She Did not wont aney Boddy She Told Mee She
Should Like to Come up to see you But She Cant Come know for she is
Boddyley ill and Harry Donte Work there know But he Go up there Once
in Two or Three Day Harry Offered is self to Go up to Live With your
Aunt But She Made him know Ancer. I hay Been up to your Aunt at Work
for 5 Weeks Hopping and Ragluting Your Aunt Donte Eat nor Drink But
vary Littel indeed.

"I am Happy to Say We are Both Quite Well and I am Glad no hear you
are Both Quite Well

"MRS NEWTON."

This seems to have made the nieces propose to pay a visit to their aunt, perhaps to try and relieve the monopoly of her existence and cheer her up a little. In their letter, doubtless, the dog motive is introduced that is so finely developed presently by Mrs. Newton. I should like to have been able to give the theme as enounced by the nieces themselves, but their letters are not before me. Mrs. Newton writes:--

"MY DEAR GIRLS,--Your Aunt receiv your Letter your Aunt will Be vary
glad to see you as it quite a greeable if it tis to you and Shee is
Quite Willing to Eair the beds and the Rooms if you Like to Trust to
hir and the Servantes; if not I may Go up there as you Wish. My
Sister Sleeps in the Best Room as she allways Did and the Coock in the
garret and you Can have the Rooms the same as you allways Did as your
Aunt Donte set in the Parlour She Continlery Sets in the Ciching. your
Aunt says she Cannot Part from the dog know hows and She Says he will
not hurt you for he is Like a Child and I can safeley say My Self he
wonte hurt you as She Cannot Sleep in the Room With out him as he
allWay Sleep in the Same Room as She Dose. your Aunt is agreeable to
Git in What Coles and Wood you Wish for I am know happy to say your
Aunt is in as Good health as ever She Was and She is happy to hear you
are Both Well your Aunt Wishes for Ancer By Return of Post."

The nieces replied that their aunt must choose between the dog and them, and Mrs. Newton sends a second letter which brings her development to a climax. It runs:--

"DEAR MISS ---, I have Receve your Letter and i Whent up to your Aunt
as you Wish me and i Try to Perveal With her about the Dog But she
Wold not Put the Dog away nor it alow him to Be Tied up But She Still
Wishes you to Come as Shee says the Dog Shall not interrup you for She
Donte alow the Dog nor it the Cats to Go in the Parlour never sence
She has had it Donup ferfere of Spoiling the Paint your Aunt think it
vary Strange you Should Be so vary Much afraid of a Dog and She says
you Cant Go out in London But What you are up a gance one and She says
She Wonte Trust the Dog in know one hands But her Owne for She is
afraid theay Will not fill is Belley as he Lives upon Rost Beeff and
Rost and Boil Moutten Wich he Eats More then the Servantes in the
House there is not aney One Wold Beable to Give Sattefacktion upon
that account Harry offerd to Take the Dog But She Wood not Trust him
in our hands so I Cold not Do aney thing With her your Aunt youse to
Tell Me When we was at your House in London She Did not know how to
make you amens and i Told her know it was the Time to Do it But i
Considder She sets the Dog Before you your Aunt keep know Beer know
Sprits know Wines in the House of aney Sort Oneley a Little Barl of
Wine I made her in the Summer the Workmen and servantes are a Blige to
Drink wauter Morning Noon and Night your Aunt the Same She Donte Low
her Self aney Tee nor Coffee But is Loocking Wonderful Well

"I Still Remane your Humble Servant Mrs Newton

"I am vary sorry to think the Dog Perventes your Comeing

"I am Glad to hear you are Both Well and we are the same."

The nieces remained firm, and from the following letter it is plain the aunt gave way. The dog motive is repeated _pianissimo_, and is not returned to--not at least by Mrs. Newton.

"DEAR MISS ---, I Receve your Letter on Thursday i Whent to your Aunt
and i see her and She is a Greable to everry thing i asked her and
seme so vary Much Please to see you Both Next Tuseday and she has sent
for the Faggots to Day and she Will Send for the Coles to Morrow and i
will Go up there to Morrow Morning and Make the Fiers and Tend to the
Beds and sleep in it Till you Come Down your Aunt sends her Love to
you Both and she is Quite well your Aunt Wishes you wold Write againe
Before you Come as she ma Expeckye and the Dog is not to Gointo the
Parlor a Tall

"your Aunt kind Love to you Both & hopes you Wonte Fail in Coming
according to Prommis

MRS NEWTON."

From a later letter it appears that the nieces did not pay their visit after all, and what is worse a letter had miscarried, and the aunt sat up expecting them from seven till twelve at night, and Harry had paid for "Faggots and Coles quarter of Hund. Faggots Half tun of Coles 1_l._ 1_s._ 3_d._" Shortly afterwards, however, "She" again talks of coming up to London herself and writes through her servant--

"My Dear girls i Receve your kind letter & I am happy to hear you ar
both Well and I Was in hopes of seeing of you Both Down at My House
this spring to stay a Wile I am Quite well my self in Helth But vary
Low Spireted I am vary sorry to hear the Misforting of Poor charles &
how he cum to flie in the Fier I cannot think. I should like to know
if he is dead or a Live, and I shall come to London in August & stay
three or four daies if it is agreable to you. Mrs. Newton has lost
her mother in Law 4 day March & I hope you send me word Wather charles
is Dead or a Live as soon as possible, and will you send me word what
Little Betty is for I cannot make her out."

The next letter is a new handwriting, and tells the nieces of their aunt's death in the the following terms:--

"DEAR MISS ---, It is my most painful duty to inform you that your
dear aunt expired this morning comparatively easy as Hannah informs me
and in so doing restored her soul to the custody of him whom she
considered to be alone worthy of its care.

"The doctor had visited her about five minutes previously and had
applied a blister.

"You and your sister will I am sure excuse further details at present
and believe me with kindest remembrances to remain

"Yours truly, &c."

After a few days a lawyer's letter informs the nieces that their aunt had left them the bulk of her not very considerable property, but had charged them with an annuity of 1 pound a week to be paid to Harry and Mrs. Newton so long as the dog lived.

The only other letters by Mrs. Newton are written on paper of a different and more modern size; they leave an impression of having been written a good many years later. I take them as they come. The first is very short:--

"DEAR MISS ---, i write to say i cannot possiblely come on Wednesday
as we have killed a pig. your's truely,

"ELIZABETH NEWTON."

The second runs:--

"DEAR MISS ---, i hope you are both quite well in health & your Leg
much better i am happy to say i am getting quite well again i hope
Amandy has reached you safe by this time i sent a small parcle by
Amandy, there was half a dozen Pats of butter & the Cakes was very
homely and not so light as i could wish i hope by this time Sarah Ann
has promised she will stay untill next monday as i think a few daies
longer will not make much diferance and as her young man has been very
considerate to wait so long as he has i think he would for a few days
Longer dear Miss --- I wash for William and i have not got his clothes
yet as it has been delayed by the carrier & i cannot possiblely get it
done before Sunday and i do not Like traviling on a Sunday but to
oblige you i would come but to come sooner i cannot possiblely but i
hope Sarah Ann will be prevailed on once more as She has so many times
i feel sure if she tells her young man he will have patient for he is
a very kind young man

"i remain your sincerely
"ELIZABETH NEWTON."

The last letter in my collection seems written almost within measurable distance of the Christmas-card era. The sheet is headed by a beautifully embossed device of some holly in red and green, wishing the recipient of the letter a merry Xmas and a happy new year, while the border is crimped and edged with blue. I know not what it is, but there is something in the writer's highly finished style that reminds me of Mendelssohn. It would almost do for the words of one of his celebrated "Lieder ohne Worte":

"DEAR MISS MARIA,--I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your kind
note with the inclosure for which I return my best thanks. I need
scarcely say how glad I was to know that the volumes secured your
approval, and that the announcement of the improvement in the
condition of your Sister's legs afforded me infinite pleasure. The
gratifying news encouraged me in the hope that now the nature of the
disorder is comprehended her legs will--notwithstanding the process
may be gradual--ultimately get quite well. The pretty Robin Redbreast
which lay ensconced in your epistle, conveyed to me, in terms more
eloquent than words, how much you desired me those Compliments which
the little missive he bore in his bill expressed; the emblem is
sweetly pretty, and now that we are again allowed to felicitate each
other on another recurrence of the season of the Christian's
rejoicing, permit me to tender to yourself, and by you to your Sister,
mine and my Wife's heartfelt congratulations and warmest wishes with
respect to the coming year. It is a common belief that if we take a
retrospective view of each departing year, as it behoves us annually
to do, we shall find the blessings which we have received to
immeasurably outnumber our causes of sorrow. Speaking for myself I
can fully subscribe to that sentiment, and doubtless neither Miss ---
nor yourself are exceptions. Miss ---'s illness and consequent
confinement to the house has been a severe trial, but in that trouble
an opportunity was afforded you to prove a Sister's devotion and she
has been enabled to realise a larger (if possible) display of sisterly
affection.

"A happy Christmas to you both, and may the new year prove a
Cornucopia from which still greater blessings than even those we have
hitherto received, shall issue, to benefit us all by contributing to
our temporal happiness and, what is of higher importance, conducing to
our felicity hereafter.

"I was sorry to hear that you were so annoyed with mice and rats, and
if I should have an opportunity to obtain a nice cat I will do so and
send my boy to your house with it.

"I remain,
"Yours truly."

How little what is commonly called education can do after all towards the formation of a good style, and what a delightful volume might not be entitled "Half Hours with the Worst Authors." Why, the finest word I know of in the English language was coined, not by my poor old grandfather, whose education had left little to desire, nor by any of the admirable scholars whom he in his turn educated, but by an old matron who presided over one of the halls, or houses of his school.

This good lady, whose name by the way was Bromfield, had a fine high temper of her own, or thought it politic to affect one. One night when the boys were particularly noisy she burst like a hurricane into the hall, collared a youngster, and told him he was "the ramp-ingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in the whole school." Would Mrs. Newton have been able to set the aunt and the dog before us so vividly if she had been more highly educated? Would Mrs. Bromfield have been able to forge and hurl her thunderbolt of a word if she had been taught how to do so, or indeed been at much pains to create it at all? It came. It was her [Greek text]. She did not probably know that she had done what the greatest scholar would have had to rack his brains over for many an hour before he could even approach. Tradition says that having brought down her boy she looked round the hall in triumph, and then after a moment's lull said, "Young gentlemen, prayers are excused," and left them.

I have sometimes thought that, after all, the main use of a classical education consists in the check it gives to originality, and the way in which it prevents an inconvenient number of people from using their own eyes. That we will not be at the trouble of looking at things for ourselves if we can get any one to tell us what we ought to see goes without saying, and it is the business of schools and universities to assist us in this respect. The theory of evolution teaches that any power not worked at pretty high pressure will deteriorate: originality and freedom from affectation are all very well in their way, but we can easily have too much of them, and it is better that none should be either original or free from cant but those who insist on being so, no matter what hindrances obstruct, nor what incentives are offered them to see things through the regulation medium.

To insist on seeing things for oneself is to be in [Greek text], or in plain English, an idiot; nor do I see any safer check against general vigour and clearness of thought, with consequent terseness of expression, than that provided by the curricula of our universities and schools of public instruction. If a young man, in spite of every effort to fit him with blinkers, will insist on getting rid of them, he must do so at his own risk. He will not be long in finding out his mistake. Our public schools and universities play the beneficent part in our social scheme that cattle do in forests: they browse the seedlings down and prevent the growth of all but the luckiest and sturdiest. Of course, if there are too many either cattle or schools, they browse so effectually that they find no more food, and starve till equilibrium is restored; but it seems to be a provision of nature that there should always be these alternate periods, during which either the cattle or the trees are getting the best of it; and, indeed, without such provision we should have neither the one nor the other. At this moment the cattle, doubtless, are in the ascendant, and if university extension proceeds much farther, we shall assuredly have no more Mrs. Newtons and Mrs. Bromfields; but whatever is is best, and, on the whole, I should propose to let things find pretty much their own level.

However this may be, who can question that the treasures hidden in many a country house contain sleeping beauties even fairer than those that I have endeavoured to waken from long sleep in the foregoing article? How many Mrs. Quicklys are there not living in London at this present moment? For that Mrs. Quickly was an invention of Shakespeare's I will not believe. The old woman from whom he drew said every word that he put into Mrs. Quickly's mouth, and a great deal more which he did not and perhaps could not make use of. This question, however, would again lead me far from my subject, which I should mar were I to dwell upon it longer, and therefore leave with the hope that it may give my readers absolutely no food whatever for reflection.

HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF LIFE {4}

I have been asked to speak on the question how to make the best of life, but may as well confess at once that I know nothing about it. I cannot think that I have made the best of my own life, nor is it likely that I shall make much better of what may or may not remain to me. I do not even know how to make the best of the twenty minutes that your committee has placed at my disposal, and as for life as a whole, who ever yet made the best of such a colossal opportunity by conscious effort and deliberation? In little things no doubt deliberate and conscious effort will help us, but we are speaking of large issues, and such kingdoms of heaven as the making the best of these come not by observation.

The question, therefore, on which I have undertaken to address you is, as you must all know, fatuous, if it be faced seriously. Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. One cannot make the best of such impossibilities, and the question is doubly fatuous until we are told which of our two lives--the conscious or the unconscious--is held by the asker to be the truer life. Which does the question contemplate--the life we know, or the life which others may know, but which we know not?

Death gives a life to some men and women compared with which their so- called existence here is as nothing. Which is the truer life of Shakespeare, Handel, that divine woman who wrote the "Odyssey," and of Jane Austen--the life which palpitated with sensible warm motion within their own bodies, or that in virtue of which they are still palpitating in ours? In whose consciousness does their truest life consist--their own, or ours? Can Shakespeare be said to have begun his true life till a hundred years or so after he was dead and buried? His physical life was but as an embryonic stage, a coming up out of darkness, a twilight and dawn before the sunrise of that life of the world to come which he was to enjoy hereafter. We all live for a while after we are gone hence, but we are for the most part stillborn, or at any rate die in infancy, as regards that life which every age and country has recognised as higher and truer than the one of which we are now sentient. As the life of the race is larger, longer, and in all respects more to be considered than that of the individual, so is the life we live in others larger and more important than the one we live in ourselves. This appears nowhere perhaps more plainly than in the case of great teachers, who often in the lives of their pupils produce an effect that reaches far beyond anything produced while their single lives were yet unsupplemented by those other lives into which they infused their own.

Death to such people is the ending of a short life, but it does not touch the life they are already living in those whom they have taught; and happily, as none can know when he shall die, so none can make sure that he too shall not live long beyond the grave; for the life after death is like money before it--no one can be sure that it may not fall to him or her even at the eleventh hour. Money and immortality come in such odd unaccountable ways that no one is cut off from hope. We may not have made either of them for ourselves, but yet another may give them to us in virtue of his or her love, which shall illumine us for ever, and establish us in some heavenly mansion whereof we neither dreamed nor shall ever dream. Look at the Doge Loredano Loredani, the old man's smile upon whose face has been reproduced so faithfully in so many lands that it can never henceforth be forgotten--would he have had one hundredth part of the life he now lives had he not been linked awhile with one of those heaven-sent men who know _che cosa e amor_? Look at Rembrandt's old woman in our National Gallery; had she died before she was eighty-three years old she would not have been living now. Then, when she was eighty-three, immortality perched upon her as a bird on a withered bough.

I seem to hear some one say that this is a mockery, a piece of special pleading, a giving of stones to those that ask for bread. Life is not life unless we can feel it, and a life limited to a knowledge of such fraction of our work as may happen to survive us is no true life in other people; salve it as we may, death is not life any more than black is white.

The objection is not so true as it sounds. I do not deny that we had rather not die, nor do I pretend that much even in the case of the most favoured few can survive them beyond the grave. It is only because this is so that our own life is possible; others have made room for us, and we should make room for others in our turn without undue repining. What I maintain is that a not inconsiderable number of people do actually attain to a life beyond the grave which we can all feel forcibly enough, whether they can do so or not--that this life tends with increasing civilisation to become more and more potent, and that it is better worth considering, in spite of its being unfelt by ourselves, than any which we have felt or can ever feel in our own persons.

Take an extreme case. A group of people are photographed by Edison's new process--say Titiens, Trebelli, and Jenny Lind, with any two of the finest men singers the age has known--let them be photographed incessantly for half an hour while they perform a scene in "Lohengrin"; let all be done stereoscopically. Let them be phonographed at the same time so that their minutest shades of intonation are preserved, let the slides be coloured by a competent artist, and then let the scene be called suddenly into sight and sound, say a hundred years hence. Are those people dead or alive? Dead to themselves they are, but while they live so powerfully and so livingly in us, which is the greater paradox--to say that they are alive or that they are dead? To myself it seems that their life in others would be more truly life than their death to themselves is death. Granted that they do not present all the phenomena of life--who ever does so even when he is held to be alive? We are held to be alive because we present a sufficient number of living phenomena to let the others go without saying; those who see us take the part for the whole here as in everything else, and surely, in the case supposed above, the phenomena of life predominate so powerfully over those of death, that the people themselves must be held to be more alive than dead. Our living personality is, as the word implies, only our mask, and those who still own such a mask as I have supposed have a living personality. Granted again that the case just put is an extreme one; still many a man and many a woman has so stamped him or herself on his work that, though we would gladly have the aid of such accessories as we doubtless presently shall have to the livingness of our great dead, we can see them very sufficiently through the master pieces they have left us.

As for their own unconsciousness I do not deny it. The life of the embryo was unconscious before birth, and so is the life--I am speaking only of the life revealed to us by natural religion--after death. But as the embryonic and infant life of which we were unconscious was the most potent factor in our after life of consciousness, so the effect which we may unconsciously produce in others after death, and it may be even before it on those who have never seen us, is in all sober seriousness our truer and more abiding life, and the one which those who would make the best of their sojourn here will take most into their consideration.

Unconsciousness is no bar to livingness. Our conscious actions are a drop in the sea as compared with our unconscious ones. Could we know all the life that is in us by way of circulation, nutrition, breathing, waste and repair, we should learn what an infinitesimally small part consciousness plays in our present existence; yet our unconscious life is as truly life as our conscious life, and though it is unconscious to itself it emerges into an indirect and vicarious consciousness in our other and conscious self, which exists but in virtue of our unconscious self. So we have also a vicarious consciousness in others. The unconscious life of those that have gone before us has in great part moulded us into such men and women as we are, and our own unconscious lives will in like manner have a vicarious consciousness in others, though we be dead enough to it in ourselves.

If it is again urged that it matters not to us how much we may be alive in others, if we are to know nothing about it, I reply that the common instinct of all who are worth considering gives the lie to such cynicism. I see here present some who have achieved, and others who no doubt will achieve, success in literature. Will one of them hesitate to admit that it is a lively pleasure to her to feel that on the other side of the world some one may be smiling happily over her work, and that she is thus living in that person though she knows nothing about it? Here it seems to me that true faith comes in. Faith does not consist, as the Sunday School pupil said, "in the power of believing that which we know to be untrue." It consists in holding fast that which the healthiest and most kindly instincts of the best and most sensible men and women are intuitively possessed of, without caring to require much evidence further than the fact that such people are so convinced; and for my own part I find the best men and women I know unanimous in feeling that life in others, even though we know nothing about it, is nevertheless a thing to be desired and gratefully accepted if we can get it either before death or after. I observe also that a large number of men and women do actually attain to such life, and in some cases continue so to live, if not for ever, yet to what is practically much the same thing. Our life then in this world is, to natural religion as much as to revealed, a period of probation. The use we make of it is to settle how far we are to enter into another, and whether that other is to be a heaven of just affection or a hell of righteous condemnation.

Who, then, are the most likely so to run that they may obtain this veritable prize of our high calling? Setting aside such lucky numbers drawn as it were in the lottery of immortality, which I have referred to casually above, and setting aside also the chances and changes from which even immortality is not exempt, who on the whole are most likely to live anew in the affectionate thoughts of those who never so much as saw them in the flesh, and know not even their names? There is a _nisus_, a straining in the dull dumb economy of things, in virtue of which some, whether they will it and know it or no, are more likely to live after death than others, and who are these? Those who aimed at it as by some great thing that they would do to make them famous? Those who have lived most in themselves and for themselves, or those who have been most ensouled consciously, but perhaps better unconsciously, directly but more often indirectly, by the most living souls past and present that have flitted near them? Can we think of a man or woman who grips us firmly, at the thought of whom we kindle when we are alone in our honest daw's plumes, with none to admire or shrug his shoulders, can we think of one such, the secret of whose power does not lie in the charm of his or her personality--that is to say, in the wideness of his or her sympathy with, and therefore life in and communion with other people? In the wreckage that comes ashore from the sea of time there is much tinsel stuff that we must preserve and study if we would know our own times and people; granted that many a dead charlatan lives long and enters largely and necessarily into our own lives; we use them and throw them away when we have done with them. I do not speak of these, I do not speak of the Virgils and Alexander Popes, and who can say how many more whose names I dare not mention for fear of offending. They are as stuffed birds or beasts in a Museum, serviceable no doubt from a scientific standpoint, but with no vivid or vivifying hold upon us. They seem to be alive, but are not. I am speaking of those who do actually live in us, and move us to higher achievements though they be long dead, whose life thrusts out our own and overrides it. I speak of those who draw us ever more towards them from youth to age, and to think of whom is to feel at once that we are in the hands of those we love, and whom we would most wish to resemble. What is the secret of the hold that these people have upon us? Is it not that while, conventionally speaking, alive, they most merged their lives in, and were in fullest communion with those among whom they lived? They found their lives in losing them. We never love the memory of any one unless we feel that he or she was himself or herself a lover.

I have seen it urged, again, in querulous accents, that the so-called immortality even of the most immortal is not for ever. I see a passage to this effect in a book that is making a stir as I write. I will quote it. The writer says:--

"So, it seems to me, is the immortality we so glibly predicate of
departed artists. If they survive at all, it is but a shadowy life
they live, moving on through the gradations of slow decay to distant
but inevitable death. They can no longer, as heretofore, speak
directly to the hearts of their fellow-men, evoking their tears or
laughter, and all the pleasures, be they sad or merry, of which
imagination holds the secret. Driven from the marketplace they become
first the companions of the student, then the victims of the
specialist. He who would still hold familiar intercourse with them
must train himself to penetrate the veil which in ever-thickening
folds conceals them from the ordinary gaze; he must catch the tone of
a vanished society, he must move in a circle of alien associations, he
must think in a language not his own." {5}

This is crying for the moon, or rather pretending to cry for it, for the writer is obviously insincere. I see the _Saturday Review_ says the passage I have just quoted "reaches almost to poetry," and indeed I find many blank verses in it, some of them very aggressive. No prose is free from an occasional blank verse, and a good writer will not go hunting over his work to rout them out, but nine or ten in little more than as many lines is indeed reaching too near to poetry for good prose. This, however, is a trifle, and might pass if the tone of the writer was not so obviously that of cheap pessimism. I know not which is cheapest, pessimism or optimism. One forces lights, the other darks; both are equally untrue to good art, and equally sure of their effect with the groundlings. The one extenuates, the other sets down in malice. The first is the more amiable lie, but both are lies, and are known to be so by those who utter them. Talk about catching the tone of a vanished society to understand Rembrandt or Giovanni Bellini! It's nonsense--the folds do not thicken in front of these men; we understand them as well as those among whom they went about in the flesh, and perhaps better. Homer and Shakespeare speak to us probably far more effectually than they did to the men of their own time, and most likely we have them at their best. I cannot think that Shakespeare talked better than we hear him now in "Hamlet" or "Henry the Fourth"; like enough he would have been found a very disappointing person in a drawing-room. People stamp themselves on their work; if they have not done so they are naught; if they have we have them; and for the most part they stamp themselves deeper in their work than on their talk. No doubt Shakespeare and Handel will be one day clean forgotten, as though they had never been born. The world will in the end die; mortality therefore itself is not immortal, and when death dies the life of these men will die with it--but not sooner. It is enough that they should live within us and move us for many ages as they have and will. Such immortality, therefore, as some men and women are born to, achieve, or have thrust upon them, is a practical if not a technical immortality, and he who would have more let him have nothing.

I see I have drifted into speaking rather of how to make the best of death than of life, but who can speak of life without his thoughts turning instantly to that which is beyond it? He or she who has made the best of the life after death has made the best of the life before it; who cares one straw for any such chances and changes as will commonly befall him here if he is upheld by the full and certain hope of everlasting life in the affections of those that shall come after? If the life after death is happy in the hearts of others, it matters little how unhappy was the life before it.

And now I leave my subject, not without misgiving that I shall have disappointed you. But for the great attention which is being paid to the work from which I have quoted above, I should not have thought it well to insist on points with which you are, I doubt not, as fully impressed as I am: but that book weakens the sanctions of natural religion, and minimises the comfort which it affords us, while it does more to undermine than to support the foundations of what is commonly called belief. Therefore I was glad to embrace this opportunity of protesting. Otherwise I should not have been so serious on a matter that transcends all seriousness. Lord Beaconsfield cut it shorter with more effect. When asked to give a rule of life for the son of a friend he said, "Do not let him try and find out who wrote the letters of Junius." Pressed for further counsel he added, "Nor yet who was the man in the iron mask"--and he would say no more. Don't bore people. And yet I am by no means sure that a good many people do not think themselves ill-used unless he who addresses them has thoroughly well bored them--especially if they have paid any money for hearing him. My great namesake said, "Surely the pleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat," and great as the pleasure both of cheating and boring undoubtedly is, I believe he was right. So I remember a poem which came out some thirty years ago in _Punch_, about a young lady who went forth in quest to "Some burden make or burden bear, but which she did not greatly care, oh Miserie." So, again, all the holy men and women who in the Middle Ages professed to have discovered how to make the best of life took care that being bored, if not cheated, should have a large place in their programme. Still there are limits, and I close not without fear that I may have exceeded them.

THE SANCTUARY OF MONTRIGONE {6}

The only place in the Valsesia, except Varallo, where I at present suspect the presence of Tabachetti {7} is at Montrigone, a little-known sanctuary dedicated to St. Anne, about three-quarters of a mile south of Borgo-Sesia station. The situation is, of course, lovely, but the sanctuary does not offer any features of architectural interest. The sacristan told me it was founded in 1631; and in 1644 Giovanni d'Enrico, while engaged in superintending and completing the work undertaken here by himself and Giacomo Ferro, fell ill and died. I do not know whether or no there was an earlier sanctuary on the same site, but was told it was built on the demolition of a stronghold belonging to the Counts of Biandrate.