Chapter XIV (2)

There is sufficient kindliness excited in the attendant by the appeal to her feelings, while there is no call for the agony which a congenial friend must sustain; and, on the other side, there is no overwhelming sense of obligation to the nurse, but a satisfactory consciousness of, at least, partial requital. It is no small item in the account of this method, that the promotion of the happiness of the attendant is a cheerful, natural, and salutary pursuit to the invalid; a daily duty imposed when so many others are withdrawn; a fragment of beneficent power left in the scene of its wreck. To dignify her by putting one’s self under express and frequent obligations to her,--to rejoice her by enjoying relief or pleasure devised by her ingenuity,--to spare her health, promote her little fortunes, encourage her best tastes and aspirations, and draw out for her, as well as for one’s self, the lessons of the sick-room; to study these things befits the mutual relation, and cheers the life of the sufferer, while the connexion is not so close as to involve the severer pains of sympathy.

In a sick-room, where health is never again to enter, it is well and easily understood that commemorative seasons, anniversaries, &c., are far from being, as elsewhere, among the gayest. In truth, they are often mournful enough; but I am confident that they are most cheerily spent alone. No heart leal to its kind can bear to let them pass unnoticed. It is an intolerable selfishness to abolish them, as far as in one lies, because they have ceased to gladden us; this would be as paltry as to turn one’s back on an old companion, formerly all merriment and smiles, because he comes to us in mourning or in tears; or, let us say, abstracted and thoughtful. But it does not succeed to make small attempts to keep the day, for the sake of one or two companions, putting up Christmas holly over the fire-place, where there is only one to sit, and having Christmas fare brought to the couch, to be sent away again. But when one is alone, the matter is very different, and becomes far gayer. There is nothing, then, to prevent my being in the world again for the day; no human presence to chain me to my prison. When my servant is dismissed to make merry with the rest, and I am alone with my holly sprigs and the memories of old years, I can flit at will among the family groups that I see gathered round many fire-sides. If the morning is sunny, I actually see, with my telescope, the gay crowds that throng the opposite shore after church; and the sight revives the dimmed image of crowded streets, and brings back to my ear the almost forgotten sound of “the church-going bell.” When it grows dark, and my lamp burns so steadily as to give of itself a deep impression of stillness; when there is no sound but of the cinder dropping on the hearth, or of the turning of the leaf as I read or write, there is something of a holiday feeling in pausing to view and listen to what is going on in all the houses where one has an interest. By means of that inimitable telescope we carry about in us, (which acts as well in the pitch-dark night as at noon, and defies distance and house-walls,) I see in turn a Christmas tree, with its tapers glittering in a room full of young eyes, or the games and the dance, or the cozy little party of elderly folk round the fire or the tea-table; and I hear, not the actual jokes, but the laughter, and “the sough of words without the sense,” and can catch at least the soul of the merriment. If I am at ease, I am verily among them: if not, I am thankful not to be there; and, at all events have, from life-long association, caught so much of the contagious spirit of sociability, that, when midnight comes, I lie down with an impression of its having been an extraordinary day,--a social one, though, (as these are the days when one is sure _not_ to see one’s doctor,) the face of my maid is, in reality, the only one that has met my eyes. O yes! on these marked days, however it may be on ordinary ones, our friends may take our word for it that we are most cheery alone.

There is one day of the year of which everybody will believe this,--one’s birthday. Regarded as a birthday usually and naturally is, in ordinary circumstances, there must be something melancholy in it when attempted to be kept in the sick-room of a permanent invalid: but this melancholy is lost when one is alone. It is true, one’s mind goes back to the festivals of the day in one’s childhood, and to the mantling feelings of one’s youth, when each birthday brought us a step further into the world which lay in its gay charms all before us; and we find the gray hairs and thin hands of to-day form an ugly contrast with the images conjured up. But, in another view,--a view which can be enjoyed only in silence and alone,--what a sanctity belongs to these gray hairs and other tokens of decay! They and the day are each tokens (how dear!) seals (how distinct!) of promise of our selection for a not distant admittance to a station whence we may review life and the world to better advantage than even now. If, with every year of contemplation, the world appears a more astonishing fact, and life a more noble mystery, we cannot but be reanimated by the recurrence of every birthday which draws us up higher into the region of contemplation, and nearer to the gate within which lies the disclosure of all mysteries which worthily occupy us now, and doubtless a new series of others adapted to our then ennobled powers. This is a birthday experience which it requires leisure and solitude fully to appropriate: and it yet leaves liberty for the human sympathies which belong to the season. Post time is looked to for its sure freight of love and pity and good wishes from a few--or not a few--whose affections keep them even more on the watch than ourselves for one’s own holy day. Letters are one’s best company on that day,--and best if they are one’s only company.

There is one point on which I can speak only as every one may,--from observation and thought,--but on which I have a very decided impression, notwithstanding;--as to the conduct which would be dictated by the truest sympathy in a case which not unfrequently occurs. I have known instances of persons, most benevolent and thoughtless of themselves through life, becoming _exigeans_ and oppressive in their last days, merely through want of information as to what they are doing. One attendant is usually preferred to all others by a dying person: and I have seen the favourite nurse worn out by the incessant service required day and night by the sufferer, in ignorance how time passes,--even in mistake of the night for the day. I have known the most devoted and benevolent of women call up her young nurse from a snatch of sleep at two in the morning to read aloud, when she had been reading aloud for six or seven hours of the preceding day. I have known a kind-hearted and self-denying man require of two or three members of his family to sit and talk and be merry in his chamber, two or three hours after midnight:--and both for want of a mere intimation that it was night, and time for the nurse’s rest. How it makes one shudder to think of this being one’s own case! The passing doubt whether one can trust one’s friends, when the season comes, to save one from such tyrannical mistakes, is a doubt sickening to the heart. Nothing is clearer _now_, when we are in full possession of ourselves, than that the most sympathising friend is one who cherishes our amiability and reasonableness to the last,--who preserves our perfect understanding with those about us through all dimness of the eyes and wandering of the brain. If I could not trust my friends to save me from involuntary encroachment at the last, I had rather scoop myself a hole in the sand of the desert, and die alone, than be tended by the gentlest hands, and soothed by the most loving voices in the choicest chamber.

It is doubtless easiest to comply at the moment of such exactions, at any sacrifice of subsequent health and nerve: but it should be remembered that the sacrifice is not of health alone. The posthumous love must suffer;--or if not the love, the respect for the departed. It is impossible to love one who appears in a selfish aspect,--though it be the merest mask, most briefly worn,--so well as the countenance that never concealed its benevolence for a moment. Let then the timely thought of the future,--a provident care for the memory of the dying friend, suggest the easy prudence which may obviate encroachment. Let the bewildered sufferer be frequently and cheerfully told the hour,--and informed that such an one is going to rest, to be replaced by another for so many hours. A little forethought and resource may generally prevent the great evil I speak of: and if not, true sympathy requires that there should be a cheerful word of remonstrance--or let us call it rectification. So may it be with me, if so lingering a departure be appointed! Thus would every one say beforehand; and it seems to me a sin against every one’s moral rights not to take him at his word.

NATURE TO THE INVALID.

“O mighty love! Man is one world and hath
Another to attend him!”
GEORGE HERBERT.

“Let us find room for this great guest in our small houses.”
_Emerson._

“Shut not so soon! The dull-eyed night
Has not as yet begun
To make a seizure of the light,
Or to seal up the sun.”
HERRICK.

When an invalid is under sentence of disease for life, it becomes a duty of first-rate importance to select a proper place of abode. This is often overlooked; and a sick prisoner goes on to live where he lived before, for no other reason than because he lived there before. Many a sufferer languishes amidst street noises, or passes year after year in a room whose windows command dead walls, or paved courts, or some such objects; so that he sees nothing of Nature but such sky and stars as show themselves above the chimney-tops. I remember the heart-ache it gave me to see a youth, confined to a recumbent posture for two or three years, lying in a room whence he could see nothing, and dependent therefore on the cage of birds by his bed-side, and the flowers his friends sent him, for the only notices of Nature that reached him, except the summer’s heat and winter’s cold. There was no sufficient reason why he should not have been placed where he could overlook fields, or even the sea.

If a healthy man, entering upon a temporary imprisonment, hangs his walls with a paper covered with roses, and every one sympathises in this forethought for his mind’s health, much more should the invalid, (who, though he must be a prisoner, has yet liberty of choice where his prison shall be,) provide for sustaining and improving his attachment to Nature, and for beguiling his sufferings, by the unequalled refreshments she affords. He will be wise to sacrifice indolence, habit, money and convenience, at the outset, to place himself where he can command the widest or the most beautiful view that can be had without sacrificing advantages more essential still. There are few things more essential still: but there are some;--such as medical attendance, and a command of the ordinary conveniences of life.

What is the best kind of view for a sick prisoner’s windows to command? I have chosen the sea, and am satisfied with my choice. We should have the widest expanse of sky, for night scenery. We should have a wide expanse of land or water, for the sake of a sense of liberty, yet more than for variety; and also because then the inestimable help of a telescope may be called in. Think of the difference to us between seeing from our sofas the width of a street, even if it be Sackville-street, Dublin, or Portland Place, in London, and thirty miles of sea view, with its long boundary of rocks, and the power of sweeping our glance over half a county, by means of a telescope! But the chief ground of preference of the sea is less its space than its motion, and the perpetual shifting of objects caused by it. There can be nothing in inland scenery which can give the sense of life and motion and connexion with the world like sea changes. The motion of a waterfall is too continuous,--too little varied,--as the breaking of the waves would be, if that were all the sea could afford. The fitful action of a windmill,--the waving of trees, the ever-changing aspects of mountains are good and beautiful: but there is something more life-like in the going forth and return of ships, in the passage of fleets, and in the never-ending variety of a fishery.

But then, there must not be too much sea. The strongest eyes and nerves could not support the glare and oppressive vastness of an unrelieved expanse of waters. I was aware of this in time, and fixed myself where the view of the sea was inferior to what I should have preferred, if I had come to the coast for a summer visit. Between my window and the sea is a green down, as green as any field in Ireland; and on the nearer half of this down, haymaking goes forward in its season. It slopes down to a hollow, where the Prior of old preserved his fish, there being sluices formerly at either end, the one opening upon the river, and the other upon the little haven below the Priory, whose ruins still crown the rock. From the Prior’s fish-pond, the green down slopes upwards again to a ridge; and on the slope are cows grazing all summer, and half way into the winter. Over the ridge, I survey the harbour and all its traffic, the view extending from the light-houses far to the right, to a horizon of sea to the left. Beyond the harbour lies another county, with, first, its sandy beach, where there are frequent wrecks--too interesting to an invalid,--and a fine stretch of rocky shore to the left; and above the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys flying their kites; lovers and friends taking their breezy walk on Sundays; the sportsman with his gun and dog; and the washerwomen converging from the farm-houses on Saturday evenings, to carry their loads, in company, to the village on the yet further height. I see them, now talking in a cluster, as they walk each with her white burden on her head, and now in file, as they pass through the narrow lane; and finally they part off on the village green, each to some neighbouring house of the gentry. Behind the village and the heath, stretches the rail-road; and I watch the train triumphantly careering along the level road, and puffing forth its steam above hedges and groups of trees, and then labouring and panting up the ascent, till it is lost between two heights, which at last bound my view. But on these heights are more objects; a windmill, now in motion and now at rest; a lime-kiln, in a picturesque rocky field; an ancient church tower, barely visible in the morning, but conspicuous when the setting sun shines upon it; a colliery, with its lofty wagonway, and the self-moving wagons running hither and thither, as if in pure wilfulness; and three or four farms, at various degrees of ascent, whose yards, paddocks, and dairies I am better acquainted with than their inhabitants would believe possible. I know every stack of the one on the heights. Against the sky I see the stacking of corn and hay in the season, and can detect the slicing away of the provender, with an accurate eye, at the distance of several miles. I can follow the sociable farmer in his summer-evening ride, pricking on in the lanes where he is alone, in order to have more time for the unconscionable gossip at the gate of the next farm-house, and for the second talk over the paddock-fence of the next, or for the third or fourth before the porch, or over the wall, when the resident farmer comes out, pipe in mouth, and puffs away amidst his chat, till the wife appears, with a shawl over her cap, to see what can detain him so long; and the daughter follows, with her gown turned over head (for it is now chill evening), and at last the sociable horseman finds he must be going, looks at his watch, and, with a gesture of surprise, turns his steed down a steep broken way to the beach, and canters home over the sands, left hard and wet by the ebbing tide, the white horse making his progress visible to me through the dusk. Then, if the question arises which has most of the gossip spirit, he or I, there is no shame in the answer. Any such small amusement is better than harmless--is salutary--which carries the spirit of the sick prisoner abroad into the open air, and among country people. When I shut down my window, I feel that my mind has had an airing.

But there are many times when these distant views cannot be sought; when we are too languid for any objects that do not present themselves near at hand. Here, too, I am provided. I overlook gardens, and particularly a well-managed market-garden, from which I have learned, and enjoyed, not a little. From the radish-sowing in early spring, to the latest turnip and onion cropping, I watch the growth of everything, and hence feel an interest in the frosts and rain, which I should otherwise not dream of. A shower is worth much to me when the wide potato-beds, all dry and withering in the morning, are green and fresh in the evening light; and the mistress of the garden, bringing up her pails of frothing milk from the cow-house, looks about her with complacency, and comes forth with fresh alacrity to cut the young lettuces which are sent for, for somebody’s supper of cold lamb.

The usual drawback of a sea-side residence is the deficiency of trees. I see none (except through the telescope) but one shabby sycamore, which grows between my eye and the chimney of the baths in the haven. But this is not a pure disadvantage. I may see less beauty in summer, but I also see less dreariness in winter.

The winter beauty of the coast is a great consideration. The snow does not lie; at least rarely for more than a very few hours; and then it has no time to lose its lustre. When I look forth in the morning, the whole land may be sheeted with glittering snow, while the myrtle-green sea swells and tumbles, forming an almost incredible contrast to the summer aspect of both, and even to the afternoon aspect; for before sunset the snow is gone, except in the hollows; all is green again on shore, and the waves are lilac, crested with white. My winter pleasures of this kind were, at first, a pure surprise to me. I had spent every winter of my life in a town; and here, how different it is! The sun shines into my room from my hour of rising till within a few minutes of dusk, and this, almost by settled custom, till February, our worst month. The sheeny sea, swelling in orange light, is crossed by fishing-boats, which look black by contrast, and there is none of the deadness of winter in the landscape; no leafless trees, no locking up with ice; and the air comes in through my open upper sash brisk, but sun-warmed. The robins twitter and hop in my flower-boxes, outside the window; and the sea-birds sit on the water, or cluster on the spits of sand left by the tide. Within-doors, all is gay and bright with flowering narcissus, tulips, crocus, and hyacinths. And at night, what a heaven! What an expanse of stars above, appearing more steadfast, the more the Northern Lights dart and quiver! And what a silvery sheet of moonlight below, crossed by vessels more black than those which looked blackest in the golden sea of the morning! It makes one’s very frame shiver with a delicious surprise to look, (and the more, the oftener one looks,) at a moonlit sea through the telescope; at least, it is so with one who can never get near the object in any other way. I doubt whether there be any inland spectacle so singular and stirring, except that which is common to both, a good telescopic view of the planets. This transcends all. It is well to see by day, the shadows of walkers on the wet sands; the shadows of the sails of a windmill on the sward; the shadow of rocks in a deep sea cave; but far beyond this is it to see the shadow of the disk of Saturn on his rings. How is it that so many sick prisoners are needlessly deprived of all these sights; shut up in a street of a town? What is there there, that can compensate them for what they lose?

There is some set-off to the winter privileges I have spoken of, in an occasional day of storms; perhaps two or three in each season. These are very dreary while they last; though, considering the reaction, the next fine day, salutary on the whole. On these days, the horror of the winds is great. One’s very bed shakes under them; and some neighbour’s house is pretty sure to be unroofed. The window-cushions must be removed, because nothing can keep out the rain, not even the ugly array of cloths laid over all the sashes. The rain and spray seem to ooze through the very glass. The wet comes through to the ceiling, however perfect the tiling. The splash and dash against the panes are wearing to the nerves. Balls of foam drive, like little balloons, over the garden; and, sooner or later in the day, we see the ominous rush of men and boys to the rocks and the ridge, and we know that there is mischief. We see either a vessel labouring over the bar, amidst an universal expectation that she will strike; or we see, by a certain slope of the masts, that she is actually on the rocks; or she drives wilfully over to the sands, in spite of all the efforts of steam-tugs and her own crew; and then come forth the life-boats, which we cannot help watching, but which look as if they must themselves capsize, and increase the misery instead of preventing it. Then, when the crew are taken from the rigging, and carried up to the port, ensues the painful sight of the destruction of the vessel; parties, or files of women, boys, and men, passing along the ridge or the sands with the spoils; bundles of sailcloth, armsful of spars, shoulder-loads of planks; while, in the midst, there is sure to be a report, false or true, of a vessel having foundered, somewhere near at hand. On such days, it is a relief to bar the shutters at length, and close the curtains, and light the lamp, and, if the wind will allow, to forget the history of the day. Still more thankful are we to go to bed--I can hardly say to rest--for invalids are liable to a return in the night of the painful impressions of noon, with exaggerations, unless the agitation has been such as to wear them out with fatigue. But, as I said, such days are very few. Two or three such in a year, and two or three weeks of shifting sea-fog in spring, are nearly all the drawbacks we have; nearly the only obscurations of Nature’s beauties.

How different are “the seasons, and their change,” to us, and to the busy inhabitants of towns! How common is it for townspeople to observe, that the shortest day is past without their remembering it was so near! or the equinox, or even the longest day! Whereas, we sick watchers have, as it were, a property in the changes of the seasons, and even of the moon. It is a good we would not sell for any profit, to say to ourselves, at the end of March, that the six months of longest days are now before us; that we are entering upon a region of light evenings, with their soft lulling beauties; and of short nights, when, late as we go to rest, we can almost bid defiance to horrors, and the depressions of darkness. There is a monthly spring of the spirits too, when the young moon appears again, and we have the prospect of three weeks’ pleasure in her course, if the sky be propitious. I have often smiled in detecting in myself this sense of property in such shows; in becoming aware of a sort of resentment, of feeling of personal grievance, when the sky is not propitious; when I have no benefit of the moon for several nights together, through the malice of the clouds, or the sea-haze in spring. But, now I have learned by observation where and when to look for the rising moon, what a superb pleasure it is to lie watching the sea-line, night after night, unwilling to shut the window, to leave the window-couch, to let the lamp be lighted, till the punctual and radiant blessing comes, answering to my hope, surpassing my expectation, and appearing to greet me with express and consolatory intent! Should I actually have quitted life without this set of affections, if I had not been ill? I believe it. And, moreover, I believe that my interest in these spectacles of Nature has created a new regard to them in others. I see a looking out for the rising moon among the neighbours, who have possessed the same horizon-line all their lives, but did not know its value till they saw what it is to me. I observe the children from the cottage swinging themselves up to obtain a peep over the palings, when they see me on the watch in the window; and an occasional peep at a planet, through my telescope, appears to dress the heavens in quite a new light to such as venture to take a look.

They do not know, however, anything of my most thrilling experience of these things--for it happens when they are all at rest. I keep late hours, (for the sake of husbanding my seasons of ease;) and now and then I have nerve enough to look abroad for my last vision of the day, an hour after midnight, when the gibbous moon,--having forsaken the sea,--slowly surmounts the priory ruins on the high rock, appearing in the black-blue heaven like a quite different planet from that which I have been watching,--and from that which I shall next greet, a slender crescent in the light western sky, just after sunset. To go from this spectacle to one’s bed is to recover for the hour one’s health of soul, at least: and the remembrance of such a thrill is a cordial for future sickly hours which strengthens by keeping.

I have a sense of property too in the larks which nestle in all the furrows of the down. It is a disquietude to see them start up and soar, with premature joy, on some mild January day, before our snows and storms have begun, when I detect in myself a feeling of duty to the careless creatures,--a longing to warn them, by my superior wisdom, that they must not reckon yet on spring. And on April mornings, when the shadows are strong in the hollows, and some neighbour’s child sends me in a handful of primroses from the fields, I look forth, as for my due, to see the warblers spring and fall, and to catch their carol above the hum and rejoicing outcry of awakening Nature. If the yellow butterflies do not come to my flower-box in the sunny noon, I feel myself wronged. But they do come,--and so do the bees: and there are times when the service is too importunate,--when the life and light are more than I can bear, and I draw down the blind, and shut myself in with my weakness, and with thoughts more abstract. But when, in former days, had simple, natural influences such power over me? How is it that the long-suffering sick, already deprived of so much, are ever needlessly debarred from natural and renovating pleasures like these?

Watch the effect upon them of a picture, or a print of a breezy tree,--of a gushing stream,--of a group of children swinging on a gate in a lane. If they do not (because they cannot) express in words the thirst of their souls for these images, observe how their eyes wistfully follow the portfolio or volume of plates which ministers this scenery to them. Observe how, in looking at portraits, their notice fastens at once on any morsel of back-ground which presents any rural objects. Observe the sad fondness with which they cherish flowers,--how reluctantly it is admitted that they fade. Mark the value of presents of bulbs,--above the most splendid array of plants in flower, which kind people love to send to sick prisoners. Plants in bloom are beautiful and glorious; but the pleasure to a prisoner is to see the process of growth. It is less the bright and fragrant flower that the spirit longs for than the spectacle of vegetation.

Blessings on the inventors and improvers of fern-houses! We feel towards them a mingling of the gratitude due to physicians, and appropriate to the Good People. We find under their glass-bells fairy gifts, and prescriptions devised with consummate skill. In towns, let the sick prisoner have a fern-house as a compensation for rural pleasures; and in the country as an addition to them.

Blessings on the writers of voyages and travels; and not the less for their not having contemplated our case in describing what they have seen! A school-boy’s or a soldier’s eagerness after voyages and travels is nothing to that of an invalid. We are insatiable in regard to this kind of book. To us it is scenery, exercise, fresh air. The new knowledge is quite a secondary consideration. We are weary of the aspect of a chest of drawers,--tired of certain marks on the wall, and of many unchangeable features of our apartment; so that when a morning comes, and our eyes open on these objects, and we foresee the seasons of pain or bodily distress, or mental depression, which we know must come round as regularly as the hours, we loathe the prospect of our day. Things clear up a little when we rise, and we think we ought to be writing a letter to such-a-one, which has been on our conscience for some time. While the paper and ink are being brought, we put out our hand for that book,--arrived or laid in sight this morning. It is a Journal of Travels to the Polar Sea, or over the Passes of the Alps,--or in the Punjâb,--or in Central or South America. Here the leaves turn over rapidly;--there we linger, and read one paragraph again and again, dwelling fondly on some congregation of images, to be seen by our bodily eyes no more:--on we go till stopped by the fluttering and distress,--the familiar pain, or the leaden down-sinking of the spirits, and wonder that our trying time has come so soon, before the letter is written. It has not come soon;--it is only that some hours of our penance have been beguiled,--that we have been let out of our prison for a holiday, and are now brought back to our schooling. But the good does not end here. We see everything with different eyes,--the chest of drawers,--the walls,--the bookshelves, and the pattern of the rug. We have been seeing the Northern Lights and icebergs: we have been watching for avalanches, or for the sun-rise from Etna, or gazing over the Pampas, or peering through the primeval forest; and fragments of these visions freshen the very daylight to us.

Blessings, above all, on Christopher North! We cannot but wonder whether he ever cast a thought upon such as we are when breasting the breeze on the moors, or pressing up the mountain-side, or watching beside the trout-stream; or summoning the fowls of heaven, and passing them in review into his Aviary;--or, especially, whether he had any thought of recreating us when he sent forth his “Recreations” within reach of our hands. If he did not think of sick prisoners in issuing his vital, breezy book, he has missed a pleasure worthy of a heart like his. He pities the town-dwellers who might relish nature and will not: but his pity for them must be destitute of the zest which pity derives from a consciousness of helpfulness. He can hardly help those to country privileges who will not help themselves. But has he remembered the chamber-dwellers,--the involuntary plodders within narrow bounds,--few in comparison with the other class, it is true, but, if estimated by emotion--by experience in which his heart can sympathise, not less entitled to his regards?

Whether he thought of us or not, he has recreated us. Whether he is now conscious of the fact or not, his spirit has come, many a time while his tired body slept, and opened our prison-doors, and led us a long flight over mountain and moor, lake and lea, and dropped us again on our beds, refreshed and soothed, to dream at least of having felt the long-lost sensation of health once more. Blessings on him then, as the kindest of the friendly ghosts who use well their privilege of passing in and out of all secret and sorrowful places, as they go to and fro on the earth! If he has ministered to us with more or less deliberate intent, he needs not to be told with what heartiness we drink his health in the first full draught of the spring west wind--how cordially we pledge him in the sparkling thunder-shower, or the brimming harvest-moon.

O! if every one who sorrows for us would help us to assert our claim to Nature’s nursing, we should soon have our solace and our due. We have not all the vigour and spirit,--nor even the inclination, in our morbid state, to turn our faces to the fountain of solace--the fresh waters which cool the spirit when fretted by its tormenting companion. We cannot infallibly keep alive in our weak selves the love of Nature which would lead us to repose ourselves upon her, and forget the evils which even she cannot cure. But this should be done for us. When our sentence is passed, clear and irreversible, the next thing is to make it as lenient as possible in its operation; and especially by seeing that it is through no oversight that, if the outward man must decay, the inward man is not renewed day by day. This renewal, say some, must be by grace. Well, Nature is God’s grace, meant to abound to all,--and not least to those whom, by his chastening, he may be humbly supposed to love.

LIFE TO THE INVALID.

“There is a pause near death when men grow bold
Toward all things else.”
ROBERT LANDOR.

“Man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which
the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders: he
will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is
sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of
time. He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches,
but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is
base and frivolous in his own life, and be content with all places,
and any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in
the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath
already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.”

EMERSON.

Can we not all remember the time when, on first taking to heart Milton, and afterwards Akenside,--(before knowing anything of Dante,) we conceived the grandest moment of possible existence to be that of a Seraph, poised on balanced wings, watching the bringing out of a world from chaos, its completion in fitness, beauty and radiance, and its first motion in its orbit, when sent forth by the creative hand on its everlasting way? How many a young imagination has dwelt on this image till the act appeared to be almost one of memory,--till the vision became one of the persuasives to entertain the notion of human pre-existence, in which we find one or another about us apt to delight! To me, this conception was, in my childhood, one of eminent delight; and when, years afterwards, I was involved in more than the ordinary toil and hurry of existence, I now and then recurred to the old image, with a sort of longing to exchange my function,--my share of the world-building in which we all have to help, for the privilege of the supposed seraph. Was there nothing prophetic, or at least provident, in this? Is not sequestration from the action of life a different thing to me from what it would have been if there had been no preparation of the imagination? Though I, and my fellows in lot, must wait long for the seraphic powers which would enable us fully to enjoy and use our position, we have the position; and it is for us to see how far we can make our privilege correspond to the anticipation.

Nothing is more impossible to represent in words, even to one’s self in meditative moments, than what it is to lie on the verge of life and watch, with nothing to do but to think, and learn from what we behold. Let any one recall what it is to feel suddenly, by personal experience, the full depth of meaning of some saying, always believed in, often repeated with sincerity, but never till now _known_. Every one has felt this, in regard to some one proverb, or divine scriptural clause, or word of some right royal philosopher or poet. Let any one then try to conceive of an extension of this realisation through all that has ever been wisely said of man and human life, and he will be endeavouring to imagine our experience. Engrossing, thrilling, overpowering as the experience is, we have each to bear it alone; for each of us is surrounded by the active and the busy, who have a different gift and a different office;--and if not, it is one of those experiences which are incommunicable. If we endeavour to utter our thoughts on the folly of the pursuit of wealth, on the emptiness of ambition, on the surface nature of distinctions of rank, &c. we are only saying what our hearers have had by heart all their lives from books,--through a long range of authors, from Solomon to Burns. Spoken moralities really reach only those whom they immediately concern;--and they are such as are saying the same things within their own hearts. We utter them under two conditions:--sometimes because we cannot help it; and sometimes under a sense of certainty that a human heart somewhere is needing the sympathy for which we yearn.

You, my fellow-sufferer, now lying on your couch, the newspaper dropping from your hand, while your eyes are fixed on the lamp, are you not smiling at the thought that you have preserved, up to this time, more or less of that faith of your childhood--that everything that is in print is true? Before we had our present leisure for reflection, we read one newspaper,--perhaps occasionally one on the other side. We found opposition of views; but this was to be expected from diversities of minds and position. Now the whole press is open to us, and we see what is said on all sides. What an astonishing result! We hear that Cabinet Ministers are apt to grow nervous about newspaper commentaries on their conduct. To us this seems scarcely possible, seeing, as we do, that, though every paper may be useful reading for the suggestions and other lights it affords, every one is at fault, as a judge. Every one forgets, actually or politicly, that it is in possession of only partial information, generally speaking; we find no guarding intimation to the reader, that there may be information behind which might alter the aspect of the question. Such notice may be too much to expect of diurnal literature; but the confusion made by the positiveness of all parties, proceeding on their respective faulty grounds of fact--a positiveness usually proportioned to the faultiness of the grounds--is such as might, one would think, relieve Cabinet Ministers who have their work at heart, from any very anxious solicitude about the judgments of the press, in regard to unfinished affairs. Meantime, what a work is done! Amidst the flat contradictions of fact, and oppositions of opinion,--amidst the passion which sets men’s wits to work to conceive of and propose all imaginable motives and results, what an abundance of light is struck out! From a crowd of falsehoods, what a revelation we have of the truth, which no one man, nor party of men, could reveal!--of the wants, wishes, and ideas of every class or coterie of society that can speak for itself, and of some that cannot!

Observe the process to which all this conduces. Before we were laid aside, we read, as everybody read, philosophical histories, in which the progress of society was presented; we read of the old times, when the chieftain, whatever his title, dwelt in the castle on the steep, while his retainers were housed in a cluster of dwellings under the shadow of his protection. We read of the indispensable function of the Priest, in the castle, and of the rise of his order; and then of the Lawyer and _his_ order. We read of the origin of Commerce, beginning in monopoly; and then of the gradual admission of more and more parties to the privileges of trade, and their settling themselves in situations favourable for the purpose, and apart from the head monopolists. We read of the indispensable function of the Merchant, and the rise of _his_ order. We read of the feuds and wars of the aristocratic orders, which, while fatally weakening them, left leisure for the middle and lower classes to rise and grow, and strengthen themselves, till the forces of society were shifted, and its destinies presented a new aspect. We read of the sure, though sometimes intermitting, advance of popular interests, and reduction of aristocratic power and privileges, throughout the general field of civilisation. We read of all these things, and assented to what seemed so very clear--so distinct an interpretation of what had happened up to our own day. At the same time, busy and involved as we were in the interests of the day, how little use did we make of the philosophic retrospect, which might and should have been prophetic! You, I think, dreaded in every popular movement a whirlwind of destruction--in every popular success a sentence of the dissolution of society. You believed that such a man, or such a set of men, could give stability to our condition, and fix us, for an unassignable time, at the point of the last settlement, or what you assumed to be the latest. I, meanwhile, believed that our safety or peril, for a term, depended on the event of this or that movement, the carrying of this or that question. I was not guilty of fearing political ruin. I did with constancy believe in the certain advance of popular interests, and demolition of all injurious power held by the few; but I believed that more depended on single questions than was really involved in such, and that separate measures would be more comprehensive and complete than a dispassionate observer thinks possible. In the midst of all this, you and I were taken apart; and have not our eyes been opened to perceive, in the action of society, the continuation of the history we read so long ago? I need scarcely allude to the progress of popular interests, and the unequalled rapidity with which some great questions are approaching to a settlement. We have a stronger tendency to speculate on the movements of the minds engaged in the transaction of affairs, than on the rate of advance of the affairs themselves. With much that is mortifying and sad, and something that is amusing, how much is there instructive! And how clear, as in a bird’s-eye view of a battle, or as in the analysis of a wise speculative philosopher, is the process!

We see everybody that is busy doing what we did--overrating the immediate object. There is no sin in this, and no harm, however it proves incessantly the fallibility of human judgments. It is ordered by Him who constituted our minds and our duties, that our business of the hour should be magnified by the operation of our powers upon it. Without this, nothing would ever be done; for every man’s energy is no more than sufficient for his task; and there would be a fatal abatement of energy, if a man saw his present employment in the proportion in which it must afterwards appear to other affairs,--the limitation and weakness of our powers causing us to apprehend feebly the details of what we see, when we endeavour to be comprehensive in our views. The truth seems to lie in a point of view different from either. I doubt whether it is possible for us to overrate the positive importance of what we are doing, though we are continually exaggerating its value in relation to other objects of our own, while it seems pretty certain that we entertain an inadequate estimate of interests that we have dismissed, to make room for new ones.

Next, we see the present operation of old liberalising causes so strong as to be irresistible; men of all parties--or, at least, reasonable men of all parties--so carried along by the current of events, that it is scarcely now a question with any one what is the point towards which the vessel of the State is to be carried next, but how she is to be most safely steered amidst the perils which beset an ordained course. One party mourns that no great political hero rises up to retard the speed to a rate of safety; and another party mourns that no great political hero presents himself to increase while guiding our speed by the inspiration of his genius; while there are a few tranquil observers who believe that, glorious as would be the advent of a great political hero at any time, we could never better get on without one, because never before were principles so clearly and strongly compelling their own adoption, and working out their own results. They are now the masters, and not the servants, of Statesmen; and inestimable as would be the boon of a great individual will, which should work in absolute congeniality with these powers, we may trust, for our safety and progress, in their dominion over all lesser wills.

Next, we perceive, (and we ask whether some others can be as blind to it as they appear to be,) that a great change has taken place in the morals--at least, in the conventional morals, of Statesmanship. Consistency was once, and not long ago, a primary virtue in a Statesman,--consistency, not only in general principle and aims, through a whole public life, but in views of particular questions. Now it has become far otherwise. The incurable bigots of political society are the only living politicians, except a very small number of so-called ultra-liberals, who can boast of unchanged views. Perhaps every public man of sense and honour has changed his opinions, on more or fewer questions, since he entered public life. It cannot be otherwise in a period of transition, in a monarchy where the popular element is rising, and the rulers are selected from the privileged classes alone. The virtue of such functionaries now is, not that their opinions remain stationary, and that their views remain consistent through a whole life, but that they can live and learn.

And there are two ways of doing this--two kinds of men who do it. One kind of man has all his life believed that certain popular principles are for the good of society; he now learns to extend this faith to measures which he once thought ultra and dangerous, and embraces these measures with an earnest heart, for their own value. Another sort of man has predilections opposed to these measures, laments their occurrence, and wishes the old state of affairs could have been preserved; but he sees that it is impossible,--he sees the strength of the national will, and the tendency of events so united with these measures, that there is peril in resistance. He thinks it a duty to make a timely proposal and grant of them, rather than endanger the general allegiance and tranquillity by delay, refusal, or conflict.

Now, though we may have our preferences in regard to such public men, we cannot impute guilt to either kind. We see that it is unjust to impute moral or political sin in either case. The great point of interest to you and me is to observe how such new necessities and methods work in society.

The incurables of the privileged classes of course act after their kind. They are full of astonishment and feeble rage. The very small number of really philosophical liberals--once ultras, but now nearly overtaken by the times--- see tranquilly the fulfilment of their anticipations, and anticipate still--how wisely, time will show. Of the two intermediate parties, the question is, which appears most able to live and learn? From the start the liberals had originally, it would seem that they must hold the more dignified position of the two. But, judging them out of their own mouths, what can we think and say?

To us it appears a noble thing to apprehend truth early, not merely as a guess, but as a ground of opinion and action. A man who is capable of this is secure that his opinions will be embraced by more and more minds, till they become the universal belief of men. It is natural to him to feel satisfaction as the fellowship spreads--both because fellowship is pleasant to himself, and because the hour thereby draws nearer and nearer for society to be fully blessed with the truth which was early apparent to him. When this truth becomes indisputable and generally diffused, and its related action takes place, his satisfaction should be complete.

What an exception to this natural process, this healthy enjoyment, do we witness in the political transactions of the time! Whatever may be thought of the consistency of the most rapidly progressive party, what can be said of the philosophy of the more early liberal? At every advance of their former opponents, they are exasperated. They fight for every tardily-apprehended political truth as for a private property. They not only complain--“You thought the contrary in such a year!” “Here are the words you spoke in such a year; the reverse of what you say now!” but they cry, on every declaration of conversion to one of their long-avowed opinions, “Hands off! that is _my_ truth; I got it so many years ago, and you shan’t touch it!” To you and me (to whom it is much the same thing to look back and to look abroad), it irresistibly occurs to ask whether it was thus in former transition-states of society; whether, for instance, assured and long-avowed Christians exclaimed, on occasion of the conversion of enlightened heathens--“You extolled Jupiter in such a year, and now you disparage him.” “Remember what you said of Diana no longer ago than such a year!” “Do you think we shall admit you to our Christ? He is ours these ten years!” Those of us who believe and feel that the development of moral science (of which political is one department) is as progressive as that of physical, cannot but glance at the aspect of such conduct in relation to the discovery of a new chemical agency, or important heavenly body; and then.... But enough of such illustration. Nobody doubts the absurdity, when fairly set down; though the number of grown men who have, within three years, committed it daily in newspapers, clubs, markets, and the Houses of Parliament, is so great as to be astonishing, till we discern the causes, proximate and final, of such unphilosophical discourse and demeanour.